My next school project is a paper on a specific religion (it's up to us which one we want to pick, as long as it's not our own). I decided to do mine on Shakerism, although I did briefly think about maybe doing it on the Mormons.

I've never read the Little House books. The TV series always struck me as so cloying and awful that I avoided the whole thing. That may have been my reaction to Michael Landon, though I've never reacted well to stories about cheerful, helpful, spunky children. I liked the sullen, rebellious, loner kids. OK, I was always rooting for the blonde girl who picked on Laura.

How are the books different from the TV show?

OK, I was always rooting for the blonde girl who picked on Laura.

Nellie! Hah. Nellie was outstanding.

I liked the show a lot as well, but I think the books are a lot less cloying and a lot more matter-of-fact about what was going on.

Yeah, I never saw the show, but from the books I certainly think of Laura as more rebellious than cheerful. Maybe not sullen, but stubborn and independent.

The books are so completely different from the tv show that I do not know where to begin. The books contain a lot of traveling and moving around, and the number of secondary characters is far smaller. And even though they were a bit didactic, it is nothing like the "message in every show" sensibility of the tv series.

Also, eat before you read Farmer Boy or you will end up devouring the world. That book has more food porn than Like Water for Chocolate!

Completely different, Connie. They are really immersed in the experiences of frontier life with detailed descriptions of everything from the clothes to the food to the travails of every day. As for the characters, they are just fantastically drawn, from Laura and her sisters to her parents and all of the secondary characters.

Cloying is not a word I'd use for the books (although ITA I would use it for the TV series). Riveting, wonderful, funny at times, and gripping at others (The Long Winter is an amazing account of the killer winter of 1880-1881, and the chapter when Almanzo and Cap risk their lives to get enough wheat to feed the town and save it from starvation is edge-of-your-seat nailbitingly written).

I remember in the TV show, towards the end, they had like 4938261 children in the house and none of them were really theirs. Grace, maybe? Was there really a Grace?

There was really a Mary, Laura, Carrie and Grace. All those other kids came from god knows where!

the books are a lot less cloying and a lot more matter-of-fact about what was going on.

Oh, cool. TV shows with Important Life Lessons don't appeal. And I'm stopping by the library anyway to pick up the latest Harry Dresden.

I think that Grace was in the tv series, but she was Laura's sister IRL, born after her brother died before he was two years old--he's never mentioned in the books just because the whole experience of his loss was so heartbreaking to the family. There's a reason there's a two-year gap between On the Banks of Plum Creek and On the Shores of Silver Lake--that's when Freddie was born, they moved briefly to Iowa, moved again, and Freddie died on the trip back.

After Ma died in 1924, Mary moved into Grace's house until she died four years later. Neither Grace nor Carrie ever had children of their own, and Mary never married IRL, so Rose was the only grandchild of Pa and Ma who survived to adulthood.