Do you love Laura? Did you grow up devouring her “Little House” series of books, or dressing up like characters on the television show? Do you ever wonder about the real people and events behind the stories, or what Laura thought about the world around her? Now you can ask Laura yourself!
Beloved children’s author Laura Ingalls Wilder is brought to life in this first-person interpretive program, featuring a visit with Mrs. Wilder circa 1894. Historian and life-long Wilder scholar Melanie Stringer presents the real Laura—pioneer, teacher, farmer, mother, journalist and author—in a first-person interpretive program designed for an interactive experience with Laura fans of all ages and interests. You’ll meet Laura Ingalls Wilder as she, husband Almanzo, and their little prairie Rose are en route to a new home in the Missouri Ozarks.
Hear Laura’s real stories—both well-known and the rarely-told—as she bides some time for wagon repairs and visits with the locals. Discover new details about the real experiences you’ve read in her books. Investigate the contents of Laura’s hand-painted silk reticule or send a word of greeting to the friends she writes along the journey. Ask Laura for news of the folks in Dakota or get her advice on daily housekeeping, childrearing and education—even fashion!
Did you know that Laura followed the daily news and events very closely? Did you know that she lived through several economic “panics” just as modern Americans are struggling with the current recession? How did Laura’s family cope? Ask her about it! She’ll offer a glimpse of the news and political questions she finds most pressing—in the Gilded Age of 1890s America!
Expect real answers to the questions you’ve always wanted to ask of Laura, spanning from her early childhood in the Big Woods of Wisconsin, throughout Kansas, Iowa, and Minnesota, to Laura’s young adulthood on the Great Plains of Dakota—and beyond—as the Wilder family sets out on another adventure across the prairies.
Historian Melanie Stringer is available for first-person interpretation appearances at a wide variety of Laura-centered celebrations and events…libraries, museums and schools, homeschooling organizations or special-interest clubs…no event is too small or large. Indicate your intended focus and Melanie will tailor a program specific to the needs of your event.
“The responsibility for starting the child in the right way is the parents – it cannot be delegated to the schools or the state,
for the little feet start on life’s journey from the home.” –Laura Ingalls Wilder, May 1922
Please contact Melanie via email: info@meetlauraingallswilder.com or by phone: (603) 867.5320 for further details.
excerpt and photos taken from www.meetlauraingallswilder.com
So sorry, Tracy, I only just now saw this post asking for more inftomaoirn about underground railroad activty in Malone, months after you wrote. When I was there in August 2005, our little group took a walking tour of the town, and we stopped at the Congregational Church that the Wilders attended. The pastor there gave a talk about the church’s history, which included its role as a last stop on the underground railroad before Canada. There is a tunnel in the earthen floor basement that I stood in the opening of (going through it would have involved crawling on my stomach, which I was not about to try; it was eerie enough just to climb down into the opening!), as well as a formerly hidden room that was now open. My son has CP and was using his wheelchair that day, but the pastor insisted on carrying him down the steep basement steps so that he could see the tunnel and the room with the rest of us; he felt very strongly that this was a piece of the area’s history that people should know about. Later, as we continued our walk through Malone, our guide pointed out a few houses in which similar evidence of underground railroad activity had been discovered during recent renovation projects.It was all so very, very interesting, and it led me to wonder whether the Wilders were involved, and if they were, would Almanzo have known about it? I suspect that as a prominent, prosperous man, Mr. Wilder (and maybe Royal) probably would have been involved, but that as the youngest child in the family at that time, Almanzo would likely have been shielded him from any knowlege of their involvement, for safety if nothing else. Just my speculations, but don’t we wish we could know for sure?