Though not purely autobiographical, the "Little House" books recreate a lost world of simplicity and family courage. In fact, Wilder had little time for the writing of these experiences until she was in her sixties and had, of necessity, slowed down somewhat from her daily round of farm work. Dubbed the "Grandma Moses of fiction" by Isabelle Jan in her On Children's Literature, Wilder has also been called "the quintessential American pioneer" by William Anderson in Children's Books and their Creators. Simply put, Laura Ingalls Wilder "is one of the best-known and most widely respected authors who ever wrote for children," according to Kathy Piehl in Dictionary of Literary Biography.
Wilder was twenty-eight by the time she and her husband, Almanzo Wilder, left the South Dakota prairie for the verdant Ozarks of Missouri and set up farming there. In the nearly three decades of her life that preceded this move, she had already packed enough experience for several lifetimes, and the rhythmic, season-driven life of the farm in Missouri made her grow reflective. As Donald Zochert quoted in his biography, Laura: The Life of Laura Ingalls Wilder, the future author saw life around her as much too harried: "Notice the faces of the people who rush by on the streets or on our country roads.
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