Farmer Boy

Paula Elizabeth Sitts, The Glad Season: Boyhood in the Cariboo of British Columbia

The quick review: Little House on the Prairie goes to Canada.

The Little House books are big, really big.  I don't think it is simply because of the 70s television show--I think they were big before that.  But, I don't know for sure.  The Glad Season? Well I suspect most people have never even heard of the book.  That is the first of a couple of curiosities about it.  I am not entirely sure what makes the Wilder books so much better known than the Sitts book--they aren't equally good, Little House is better, but the similarities of the Sitts book and the Wilder book are so great that it is hard to imagine that anyone who loves Wilder would not at least enjoy this book.  (In this respect there is an interesting comparison to Austen and Scott-- Pride and Prejudice is better than anything Scott wrote, but I have a hard time imagining someone who loves Austen, not also enjoying Scott--yet, while everyone (everyone!) has read Austen, Scott is much less read today.  If I were a publisher or movie producer, I would commission a series of Scott novels right away and bill them as Austenesque.)  But, returning to Sitts after the (inevitable) aside, this book has all the Little House features--young boy learning about how to live in the wilderness with an assortment of pleasant old hands around to teach him the ropes and all about the wilderness.  There is what would appear to be an inevitable romance in the book, but surprisingly, no such thing happens.  The person we think is mean and nasty at the outset turns out to be kind.  Lots of stories of catching horses and trapping and snow storms and building things.  As I said, if you like Little House, what's not to like about this book?

The second oddity is even more curious to me.  The book was a Christmas gift to our family.  I'm the only one who read it.  I tried to get Clara to read it, but I think she only made it to page 3.  Why?  I'm not sure.  The copy we have doesn't have a glossy picture on the cover, and Clara is a judge-a-book-by-its-cover type.  But, she really likes the family who gave us the book, and so I would think that is enough to get her to read it.  I think the reason may be due to the literary style--and therein lies an interesting tale.  This book is written for a pre-TV age.  Books, especially children's book have changed a lot since 1967 (when this book was published).  When I look at the books Clara reads now (and Clara reads a lot of books--in fact, she is on a campaign to read 500 pages a week all summer--I think she will manage that without any trouble at all), the one feature (of the books Clara reads (in case you lost the train of thought of the sentence because of the far too lengthy aside)) of the books Clara reads is that they all start off with a bang, a hook or some sort of immediate attention-getter.  Older books don't do that--they assume you will keep reading past page 3.  So, the first sentence of this book is, "In the midday heat all life in the canyon drowsed, lulled by the hum of insects and the listless lapping of water against the shore."  Compare that to the start of My Last Best Friend, which Clara read a few days ago:

"I'm Ida May, and there's one thing I know.  Fourth grade isn't fourth at all.  Fourth means you've done something at least three times before. But fourth grade is nothing like third grade.  Or second grade.  Or first grade. 
In fourth grade there is no more printing.  There is only cursive.  I hate cursive.
In four grade you are not allowed to add and subtract.  You are only allowed to multiply and divide."
And so on.

Now, I have not read My Last Best Friend, so I cannot comment on its overall literary value (but, you can put me down as "dubious").  But, the start is fascinating--it is exactly like a Disney Channel sitcom--it makes you smile within a matter of seconds.  Older books (like The Glad Season) have no immediate pay-off.  This is the remote control TV problem--TV shows cannot rely on a viewer waiting for a show to develop--it's really easy for Clara to flip over to Nick, Jr. if Disney loses her interest.  I think the same thing has happened with Children's books.  Clara no longer will wait long enough for a book to get interesting--it is either interesting right away, or it is discarded. 

Anyway, I thought the Sitts book was OK, but then I am not a big Little House on the Prairie fan--I mean the books were OK, and I know that many people are utterly horrified that I do not worship at the shrine of Laura Ingalls Wilder, but nonetheless, I'm sticking to it, the Little House books are OK.  The Glad Season was also OK.  So, as I said at the outset, if you think Little House is better than OK, I suspect you will think the same of this book. 

I suppose I should also add that one of the reasons I am not a big Little House fan is probably that I still have memories of Tuesday mornings in 4th grade.  Little House aired Monday nights at 8:00.  I vividly remember this because on Tuesday morning in my 4th grade class, we discussed the previous night's episode.  My bedtime in 4th grade was 7:30.  So, not only was I the only kid in the class who didn't watch Little House, everyone in the class knew it was because I had to go to be at 7:30.  Shudder.