Farmer Boy

1933, post-1981 HarperCollins edition
Laura Ingalls Wilder
Illustrated by Garth Williams
Farmer Boy
Original price $4.95, bought used for unknown
Worn paperback
B

In a way, this is a prequel to the Little House books about Laura, since her future husband is not quite nine at the start, and so Laura herself is not yet born.  But this book is sometimes considered #3 in the series.  (And you thought the book order of Narnia was tricky.)  In any case, it came out only a year after Big Woods and is set "sixty-seven years ago," just after the Civil War, although no mention is made of that even during the political discussions.

I'd put it on a level with Big Woods.  It's certainly more eventful than the first book, but I miss the Ingallses.  Not that the Wilders aren't interesting, but they're just not as likable.  It is notable that Almanzo's childhood is less primitive than Laura's, since he grows up on a farm near an established town (Malone), with a railroad and a town square. 

The most shocking part of the book is how the "big boys" threaten the schoolteacher.  They've actually killed one of the past teachers!  (Well, the teacher was injured so badly that he died later.)  No one calls in the law for some reason.  Instead, Mr. Corse borrows Mr. Wilder's whip and literally whips the big boys out of school.  I can't imagine this happening in the "Laura" books.  And it definitely wouldn't have happened in Avonlea. 

As before, Williams does well with both humans and animals.  Almanzo trains a pair of young oxen, but he dreams of having his own colt.  As the cover shows, the animals have as much personality as the people.  My favorite drawing of a human is of the elvish-looking cobbler.

This edition came out at a time when Harper was heavily promoting the prequels and sequels by modern writers, so there's a list of, for instance, "The Rose Years" books.  I couldn't make it past the first few chapters of the "Martha" book, about Laura's Scottish great-grandmother.  At least this book has the Wilder style and messages (such as, work is important but so is having fun), although it's a different part of the family.  Still, I do appreciate the family tree, even if it feels odd that Almanzo doesn't get more detail in his own book.  According to Wikipedia, LIW collapsed the age differences of the Wilder siblings, so that Royal is only four years older rather than a decade, and she omits two of the real-life siblings.