My First MOOC: On Laura Ingalls Wilder & Her Works

Like so many young girls over the past 80 years or so, I was completely enamored as a child with the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. I always felt the books were extra-specially mine, as both the character and the author are my namesake and I was born and raised in Kansas. When people have asked me what I enjoyed so much about them, I have often said that I loved reading about how people lived and made things in the 19th century. I still do attribute my love of hand sewing, patchwork, pickling, and so forth to my reading of these books (though in reality, it is probably the influence of my mother, a crafting whiz) as well as my fascination with the prairie and the wide open skies of the west.