18th or 19the Century Children’s Reflection

Consider in particular the topic of didacticism, answering the following questions: would you consider this a didactic text (in other words, do you think it is primarily designed to teach moral virtues rather than to provide entertainment, or vice versa)? How do you think a child would receive this text in the twenty-first century? Does this suggest any differences between how children and children’s literature were perceived in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries as opposed to today? Your reflection should be in MLA or APA format, 12 pt. Times New Roman font, and double-spaced.

Little House in the Big Woods is the first book in Laura Ingalls Wilders ?Little
House? series. The year is 1871 and five year old Laura Ingalls and her family, Pa, Ma,
Mary, and Baby Carrie, live in a log cabin in the Big Woods of Wisconsin. There is only one road that passes near by their cabin and they rarely see very many wagons going down the road. It is a full day's walk from their cabin to the nearest town, Pepin.
They have an attic up stairs where they store food for winter time and other things, and down stairs there is one big room and one small room. There are many aspects of farm life that Laura learns, such as making cheese, hog butchering, butter churning, and fur trading. They also learn how to make maple syrup, watch Pa make bullets for hunting, and learn about surviving in the pioneer times She even goes to town for the first time.
Laura and Mary have many childhood games, and get to sit on Pa's knees and hear him tell the stories of when he grew up or of when his father grew up. Every night before
Laura and Mary go to bed, Pa plays his fiddle and sings them to sleep. There is even a
They spend a wonderful Christmas with their relatives, Aunt Eliza and Uncle Peter, and Laura and Mary have lots of fun with their cousins, playing in the snow. Laura and
Mary do not have any friends or neighbors. So when relatives come, they are always very
Laura was among the early pioneers of the American west. They churned their own butter, made their own dolls, and hunted their own food. In this book, you hear stories of bears, owls, and panthers, and how you always had to be careful when going anywhere. This book also gives a very good idea about how things were back in the