Middle Grade Novels Like LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE

3 days ago 14

covers of four middle grade books like Little House on the Prairie

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Margaret Kingsbury grew up in a house so crammed with books she couldn’t open a closet door without a book stack tumbling, and she’s brought that same decorative energy to her adult life. Margaret has an MA in English with a concentration in writing and has worked as a bookseller and adjunct English professor. She’s currently a freelance writer and editor, and in addition to Book Riot, her pieces have appeared in School Library Journal, BuzzFeed News, The Lily, Parents, StarTrek.com, and more. She particularly loves children’s books, fantasy, science fiction, horror, graphic novels, and any books with disabled characters. You can read more about her bookish and parenting shenanigans in Book Riot’s twice-weekly The Kids Are All Right newsletter. You can also follow her kidlit bookstagram account @BabyLibrarians, or on Twitter @AReaderlyMom.

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Like many, I read Little House on the Prairie as a kid, and dreamed of what life was like on the frontier, though the book that really made me fall in love with prairie life was the likely equally problematic Sunfire Romance: Jessica, which I reread dozens of times as a tween. While the Little House series continues to appear on many must-read lists of childhood classics, its racist content is well known. Wilder’s characters often describe Native Americans as violent and frightening: “The only good Indian is a dead Indian.”

The following middle grade historical fiction novels set on the frontier are told by diverse voices, and capture the magic and fascination of living life out West in the 1800s and early 1900s. They’re great to read on their own, or along with the Little House books, where you can have conversations with kids about Native American history and the stories Wilder omits from her series.

The Birchbark House by Louise Erdrich

The Birchbark House series is perhaps the best-known alternative to Little House, for good reason, since it centers Native American experiences. The first book follows seven-year-old Ojibwa girl Omakayas through all four seasons in 1847, with her adopted Indigenous family who live on Lake Superior’s Madeline Island. The novel is rich in detail as it shows Omakayas’ daily life, from animal encounters to new siblings and a smallpox outbreak. There are five books in this series, with the first three following Omakayas until she turns 12, and the last two following her twin sons Chickadee and Makoons.

Another book about Native American experiences in the West will be released next year: Red River Rose by Carole Lindstrom.

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One Big Open Sky by Lesa Cline-Ransome

This novel-in-verse depicts a Black family making their way from Mississippi to Nebraska in a covered wagon in 1879. It’s told from three perspectives. Lettie is a young tween who idolizes her daddy and writes everything down in a journal. Sylvia is her mother, who thinks her husband’s decision to move to the frontier is foolish. Philomena is a young woman who has been hired to teach in Nebraska, but needs to find a way to get there. The three tell their stories of hardship as their wagon train encounters one disaster after another. In her author’s note, Lesa Cline-Ransome describes her childhood love of the Little House series, but always feeling a bit distant from it as a Black child. In her research, she learned that more than 20,000 Black people left the South for the West in 1879-1880, the largest great migration on record. She wanted to tell their story, and the story of Black women forming communities amid hardship and finding success in the West.

Prairie Lotus by Linda Sue Park

It’s 1880. Fourteen-year-old Hanna dreams of graduating from school and becoming a dressmaker, and when she and her father move from Los Angeles to Dakota Territory, she hopes both of her dreams will come true. Hanna learned to sew from her deceased mother, who was half Chinese and half Korean. It takes some doing to convince her father and the townsfolk that she should be able to go to school, and many townsfolk are upset about letting a Chinese girl learn alongside their white children. The few white allies in town don’t always make things easier. In the author’s note, Linda Sue Park notes that she was inspired by her childhood love of the Little House series to write this, wanting to address its racism and imagine an Asian girl’s experiences in that setting.

A Sky Full of Song by Susan Lynn Meyer

This middle grade historical fiction book centers a Jewish refugee family in the early 1900s. Eleven-year-old Shoshana and her family are fleeing violent pogroms in Ukraine to start a new life on the North Dakota prairie. Shoshana misses the cat she left behind. When she spies a kitten at a train station, she swiftly scoops him up. With kitten in hand, she settles into her family’s dugout home, and especially loves the farm animals. After witnessing anti-Jewish violence back in Ukraine, Shoshana has decided it will be better to hide her Jewishness at school to avoid any bullying, but her sister disagrees, arguing they should be proud of their heritage. It’s a beautifully written book, with all the historical details about life on the prairie that Little House readers will enjoy, but with more complexity.

Here are lists of other books middle grade readers might enjoy: