The First Four Years

1971, 4th printing but also 1971, from Harper & Row
Laura Ingalls Wilder
Illustrated by Garth Williams
The First Four Years
Original price unknown, purchase price $1.35
Very worn paperback
B-

As Rose Wilder's friend and heir Roger Lea MacBride explains in the introduction, Laura probably abandoned this manuscript after Almanzo's death in 1949.  Laura died in 1957, and Rose herself died in 1968, so if it's true, as some contend, that she revised and edited her mother's books, it doesn't seem like either woman did much to put this book into the style of the earlier Little House series. 

It's easily the shortest of Wilder's books, although it covers such a long span, the three years that Laura gave Almanzo to prove he could be a successful farmer, plus a year of grace.  Those four years are rough ones, including debt, diphtheria, ice storms, a son who dies at three weeks old, and a house fire.  Yet there are good times, too, especially with horses of course, since that's one interest the young couple* share, and a bright, active little daughter, Rose.  Like Anne's House of Dreams, this is more of a YA novel than a children's book, but while that's the best in the Green Gables series, this is one of the weakest of its series.  (Ironically, Little House on the Prairie got the other B-.)  Too bad neither Laura nor Rose put it through a few more drafts.

There are fewer illustrations than usual, most of them in the second half.  Maybe the bleaker subject matter was less inspiring to Williams.  He does a good job with the couple and their child, and the view of sad Rose watching her father comfort her mother as their house burns down is moving.  Surprisingly, the weakest illustration is of sheep, an animal that Williams has drawn well before, as in Charlotte's Web. 



*One sign of the lack of revision is that the real-life age difference of ten years is preserved here.