"Every job is good if you do your best and work hard. A man who works hard stinks only to the ones that have nothing to do but smell." (Laura Ingalls Wilder)

In Charles River Editors' History for Kids series, your children can learn about history's most important people and events in an easy, entertaining, and educational way. The concise-but-comprehensive book will keep your kid's attention all the way to the end.

"A long time ago, when all the grandfathers and grandmothers of today were little boys and little girls or very small babies, or perhaps not even born, Pa and Ma and Mary and Laura and Baby Carrie left their little house in the Big Woods of Wisconsin."

So begins the first of a series of primarily autobiographical books for children that would give 20th century America a look at what it was like when the country was still young and the West was a largely empty, untamed wilderness. They were written by a woman who had experienced a hardscrabble frontier life: Laura Ingalls Wilder. The books were first published in the 1930s, when the United States desperately needed a reminder that "tough times don't last but tough people do". In addition to giving Americans a nostalgic glimpse of the past, the books were a reminder of the nation's unique spirit and belief that hard work can overcome any obstacle.

The semi-autobiographical Little House books were so popular in their time that Laura eventually became a well-known author around the world, even as an ensuing debate grew among scholars and historians over what role Laura's daughter Rose Wilder Lane played in the drafting of the books.