Too Good to Be Altogether Lost

Rediscovering Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House Books

By: Pamela Smith Hill

Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert

Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of the well-known Little House series, wrote stories from her childhood because they were "too good to be altogether lost." With the release of NBC's Little House on the Prairie series in 1974, Wilder was well on her way to becoming an international literary superstar. Simultaneously, however, the novels themselves began to slip from view, replaced by an onslaught of assumptions and questions about Wilder's values and politics and even about the books' authenticity. From the 1980s, a slow but steady critical crescendo began to erode Wilder's literary reputation.

In Too Good to Be Altogether Lost, Wilder expert Pamela Smith Hill dives back into the Little House books, closely examining Wilder's text, her characters, and their stories. Hill reveals that these gritty, emotionally complex novels depict a realistic coming of age for a girl in the American West. This realism in Wilder's novels, once perceived as a fatal flaw, can lead to essential discussions not only about the past but about the present—and the underlying racism young people encounter when reading today. Hill's fresh approach to Wilder's books shows how this author forever changed the literary landscape of children's and young adult literature in ways that remain vital and relevant today.

©2025 Pamela Smith Hill (P)2025 Tantor Media

Boring, Dull

Wow. I was so eager to get one of Pamela's books on Audible. Finally! She does excellent LHOTP research and has gathered resources galore over the last 20 years so I am surprised that this is such a boring read. The narrator reads with so much enthusiasm it sounds like a commercial. After following Pamela's work for the past 15 years, this doesn't read as her written voice, it's all wrong. Anyway, I just cannot get past the narrator's cadence to dig in and listen with interest. It's a no for me.