On the Banks of Plum Creek
1937
- fiction
- juvenile fiction
- frontier and pioneer life
- family life
- families
- family
- social life and customs
- newbery honor
- children's fiction
- minnesota, fiction
The story
Laura and her family move to Minnesota where they live in a dugout until a new house is built and face misfortunes caused by flood, blizzard, and grasshoppers.
What it’s like
Plain, unhurried prose in a child's-eye first person, where ordinary chores, sod-and-timber rooms, and the sounds of a family at work carry most of the weight. The sensory world is domestic and earthy: the cramped warmth of a dugout cut into a creek bank, lamplight on wooden walls, the smell of bread and wet earth, the sweep of open prairie under big skies. Weather arrives as event, so a flood's rising water, a long blizzard that keeps the household indoors, and a swarm of grasshoppers feel vivid without ever turning frightening in a graphic way. The pacing is episodic and steady, closer to a series of gentle vignettes than a driving story, with each chapter settling into a new small routine. Its emotional register is warm and sturdy, with a cozy resilience running under hardship, and the arc is simply a close family pulling together through a hard year. Intensity is low: there is peril in the weather and some hunger and worry, but no violence, gore or cruelty. It suits a rainy Sunday, a bedtime read-aloud, or a quiet comfort reread, and is especially good for readers who want old-fashioned, wholesome family life with a sense of history and place.
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