Which Little House? Trivia Quiz

Answer: Little Town on the Prairie

This happens when Miss Wilder comes to teach school and Nellie Olson befriends her. Nellie is all too happy to influence Miss Wilder against Laura.

The first trouble occurs when Miss Wilder makes Carrie write her spelling mistakes on the board and Laura, seeing that she is about to faint, tells Miss Wilder who then makes Laura write them in her place.

The next day Carrie and Mamie Beardsley are swaying in their seat and the bolt becomes loose and makes a sound. Miss Wilder tells them to put their books away and just sit there and rock it. They start to but then Mamie moves and leaves Carrie doing it on her own. Miss Wilder doesn't say anything to Mamie but tells Carrie to keep rocking the bench. Laura finally snaps and says "If you want that seat rocked faster, I'll rock it for you!" So she does and uses all her strength and all the bolts come out of the floor and she makes so much noise that no-one can hear. Miss Wilder sends both her and Carrie home.

Answer: On the Banks of Plum Creek

This occurs after they have moved out of the dugout and built the new house and think they are going to have a wonderful crop to pay off all their debts. Pa had just decided that he would begin harvesting the next week when the grasshoppers came. They appeared in a big cloud and landed and ate everything that was on the ground until there was nothing left to eat. Laura talks of them being so thick on the ground that there was nowhere to stand without walking on them.

Everyone was happy when they finally left and Pa began ploughing to replant but then they all found sacks of grasshopper eggs everywhere and knew there was no point in planting a crop for the next year because when the eggs hatched they would just eat the next crop too.

Answer: The Long Winter

Almanzo James Wilder is the man that Laura eventually marries. He was raised in New York State on his father's farm. He moves out west with his older brother Royal to take a homestead claim. He is first mentioned at the end of "By The Shores Of Silver Lake" when the Ingalls see the brothers riding behind the Morgans.

Laura speaks to him for the first time in the second chapter of "The Long Winter" when Laura and Carrie have walked to town to buy a mowing part for Pa. They decided to take a short cut through the slough on the way home, get lost and come across Royal and Almanzo cutting hay. The boys point them in the right direction.

The Wilder boys are mentioned several times once the family have moved to town; there is a scene with Royal cooking pancakes and another time Pa comes in and takes Almanzo's seed wheat from in the wall where he has hidden it. Almanzo is mentioned again in the antelope hunt when Lady (a horse he lent to another man) gets loose and runs away with the antelope. The main story though is the famous ride that he takes with Cap Garland to save the town from starvation when they go to find the farmer who is rumoured to have some wheat but lives about 20 miles south of town with blizzards coming nonstop.

In this, and the following books, Almanzo is portrayed as being about six years older than Laura when he was actually ten years her senior.

Answer: Little House in the Big Woods

Laura is aged between four and five in this first book and she describes the excitement of a child's Christmas. This is the same Christmas that Pa made the bracket for Ma's china shepherdess that goes on all their travels with them. Uncle Peter, Aunt Eliza and cousins Alice, Ella and Peter have come to stay and they play wonderful games in the snow. All the children get mittens and long flat candy but Laura also gets her beloved Charlotte.

She is a rag doll with a white cloth face and black button eyes, hair of curly black yarn and is wearing red flannel stockings with a pink and blue calico dress. She is mentioned in a few of the other books, particularly "On the Banks of Plum Creek" where Mrs Nelson comes to visit with young Anna. Laura lends Anna Charlotte to play with but Anna won't give her back and takes her home. Laura is devastated but later finds her frozen in a puddle in the Nelson's yard and brings her home for Ma to fix.

Answer: These Happy Golden Years

The book begins with Pa taking Laura to the Brewster settlement to teach at her first school. It is twelve miles from De Smet so she has to board with the Brewsters while she teaches school there. It is winter and she knows Pa's horses can't make the trip to bring her home at the weekends so she has a heavy heart about having to live away from home for the first time.

The situation becomes worse when she finds out that Mrs Brewster does not want her there and will make no effort to talk or be sociable. Almanzo saves the day when he drives out and picks her up every weekend and takes her back, although Laura makes it quite clear that she is only spending time with him in order to get home!

This is the longest of the books, spanning the three years from 1882 - 1885.

Answer: Little House on the Prairie

Pa went to town to buy supplies and came back with a parcel for Ma and told her to be careful. Laura watched her open it with excitement "...in that square package there were eight small squares of window glass. They would have glass windows in their house....they were all so pleased. All winter long they could look out the windows as much as they liked, and the sunshine could come in."

This book is much more factual than her others as she had to do a lot more research for it. Although the book portrays Laura as six to seven years old the events actually take place prior to "Little House in the Big Woods" so she was actually only two to three years old and has no real memories of this time.

Laura was born in Pepin in 1867. The family lived in the Indian Territory between 1869 and 1870. In the books the family went to Plum Creek from the Indian Territory when, in fact, they actually went back to the Big Woods. The events described in the first book happened at this time. Carrie was actually born in Indian Territory just before the family moved back. They left the Big Woods for a second time in 1874 and went directly to Plum Creek.

Answer: By the Shores of Silver Lake

Grace Pearl Ingalls was born on 23rd of May 1877, she was the fifth and youngest child of the Ingalls family. She is already about two years old before we first meet her in 'Silver Lake'. This is because there is a four year break between the books at this point. Many bad things happened during this time that Laura did not think were suitable for children's books, in particular the death of her younger brother Charles.

Charles Frederick was born in 1875 in Walnut Grove (Plum Creek). The family moved to Laura's Uncle Peter's farm in South Troy, Minnesota in 1876 and Charles died there when he was nine months old. They then moved on to Burr Oak in Iowa where Pa managed 'The Masters Hotel'. A year later, in 1877, they returned to Walnut Grove. Pa built a house in town for them and he worked as a storekeeper, butcher and carpenter.

Mary became very ill in 1879, the books refer to this as Scarlet Fever but Laura refers to it as "a severe case of the measles" in her memoirs. The illness led to a stroke which caused her blindness. It is just after this that Docia visits and offers Pa the job with the railroads out west which is where the books begin again in "By the Shores of Silver Lake".

Answer: Little Town on the Prairie

This is the big event at the end of the book. Mr Owen, the school teacher, wants a graded school and thinks if they put on a splendid school exhibition for the town then the people will agree to the need for a bigger school. All of the school is involved but Laura and Ida have the whole of American history to recite between them.

Mr Brewster is at the exhibition and feels that Laura would make an excellent teacher for his school so he visits the next day to ask if she is interested. They get the school superintendent to come and examine her and he gives her a teacher's certificate. She is two months shy of her sixteenth birthday at this time.

Answer: Little House on the Prairie

This book begins with the family moving to Indian Territory because of the rumours that the land is about to be opened up for settlement by homesteaders. It is still technically under Osage ownership at this time.

There are many mentions of Indians throughout the book. There is the old Indian trail that they build their house near, the big Indian camp that is set up and the jamboree that they have. They are woken in the night by Indian war cries, there are even a couple of occasions that the Indians enter their house and take their food.

At the end of the book the settlers are told they must leave as the land has not been legally opened for them yet and still belongs to the Osage. Pa decides to leave before the Army arrives to make them go.

Answer: These Happy Golden Years

Almanzo escorts Laura home from the church a few times toward the end of "Little Town on the Prairie" but all the rest of their relationship takes place in "These Happy Golden Years". The majority of their courting takes place on outings involving Almanzo's horses but then they start attending singing school on Friday nights. On the way home from the last lesson Almanzo asked her.

"..."I was wondering..."Almanzo paused. Then he picked up Laura's hand that shone white in the starlight, and his sun browned hand closed gently over it. He had never done that before."You're hand is so small," he said. Another pause. Then quickly,"I was wondering if you would like an engagement ring."
"That would depend on who offered it to me," Laura told him. "If I should?" Almanzo asked. "Then it would depend on the ring," Laura answered..."

Almanzo brought the ring along on the Sunday drive and Laura accepted it. They married on August 25, 1885.

Answer: By the Shores of Silver Lake

Pa had been working on the railroads and everyone was moving back east for the winter. There were no buildings except for the surveyors' house so the Ingalls were preparing to move back east for the winter and return to make their land claim in the spring.

The surveyors had thought they would have to stay for the winter so they had got a supply of food and coal in to last them through the bad weather but then they realised they didn't need to be there. They offered the house and all the supplies to the Ingalls in return for them keeping an eye on all the company tools.

Ma and the girls made money when the spring came by supplying food and board for all the new settlers coming out.

Answer: The Long Winter

The family hardly had enough food for usual living at Christmastime and no money for presents. When the trains finally came through in May the Christmas barrel was on board with their turkey still frozen so Ma decides they will have their Christmas dinner then.

Laura would often change certain events and characters to make her novels more interesting but "The Long Winter" contains hardly any fiction. This winter of 1880 - 1881 is referred to in history as 'The Snow Winter' and all the events Laura writes of occurred during this winter in De Smet.

Answer: Little House in the Big Woods

Laura describes this trip to town in great detail beginning with Pa deciding they were old enough to go and then waiting for the best day to travel. She describes them getting dressed in the morning and the seven mile journey to Pepin where the houses and buildings were made of boards. There is a vivid description of the store and the storekeeper giving both her and Mary a piece of candy and them playing on the shore of Lake Pepin and collecting pebbles. Laura collected so many that her pocket ripped with the weight of them when Pa tossed her into the wagon to go home.

Laura was born near Pepin, Wisconsin in the 'Big Woods.' Her birth site is commemorated today by a period log cabin called the "Little House Wayside."

Answer: Little Town on the Prairie

There is talk of Mary going to a college for the blind since they first hear of it but money is always a problem until "Little Town on the Prairie" when Pa has planted a cash crop of corn which is growing beautifully and they decide it is time for Mary to go. They make all the preparations but then the blackbirds come and eat all the crop. Pa sells a heifer so she can still go. The main reason Laura teaches is to make the money to keep Mary in college.

The Iowa College for the Blind has a record of Mary attending for seven years between the years of 1881 and 1889 and graduating. There is one year that she did not attend but no records exist as to why not.

Answer: On the Banks of Plum Creek

Nellie Olesen is the spoilt little town girl who makes fun of Laura and Mary calling them 'country girls'; she is rude to Ma and mean to Jack which Laura never forgives.

The character of Nellie is one where Laura does use her writers' license to create a better storyline. 'Nellie Olesen' did not exist, she is a composite of three girls whom Laura did not like.

The first girl was Nellie Owens who is the basis for the Nellie Oleson in Walnut Grove. She was a year younger than Laura but she did have a younger brother called Willie and her parents did run the local store. Nellie's family never moved out west and Laura never met her again.

Genevieve Masters was the second girl. She was the daughter of one of Laura's teachers and was also a girl with a very superior attitude and was much nastier than Nellie Owens. Her family did move out to De Smet not long after the Ingalls did so she is the 'Nellie' that we meet in "Little Town on the Prairie."

The third girl was Stella Gilbert. She was a poor, but very attractive girl, who lived on a claim north of the Ingalls. This is the 'Nellie' we meet in "These Happy Golden Years" who is interested in Almanzo and gets herself invited along on Laura and Almanzo's Sunday rides until Laura gave Almanzo an ultimatum.