While Laura Ingalls grows up in a little house on the western prairie, Almanzo Wilder is living on a big farm in New York State. Almanzo and his brother and sisters help with the summer planting and fall harvest. In winter there is wood to be chopped and great slabs of ice to be cut from the river and stored. Almanzo wishes for just one thing--his very own horse--but he must prove that he is ready for such a big responsibility.

While Laura Ingalls grows up in a little house on the western prairie, Almanzo Wilder is living on a big farm in New York State. Almanzo and his brother and sisters help with the summer planting and fall harvest. In winter there is wood to be chopped and great slabs of ice to be cut from the river and stored. Almanzo wishes for just one thing--his very own horse--but he must prove that he is ready for such a big responsibility.

Continuing my first ever read-through of this series, I enjoyed this book even more than the first one in the series. Almanzo is an endearing, hard-working boy, and I love how badly he wants to be just like his dad. I find Laura Ingalls Wilder's focus on how much food the Wilders had, as well as the variety of food, to be interesting, considering that her family in the previous book had just enough. The Wilders still worked hard for their food but this was clearly a comparatively wealthy family. And the ending, involving Almanzo deciding what to do with his sudden windfall, made me tear up. That thread of story culminating in such a great moment at the end is what elevated this book to be a new favorite for me!

My enjoyment of the book was greatly enhanced by the audiobook narrator. I'm still really loving Cherry Jones's performance in this series, as well as the fiddle music now and then, though it's not as prevalent was it was in the previous book. I highly recommend this book and series so far, for adults and kids alike. ( )

After listening to the first book of the little house series I couldn't resist myself to finish the series as soon as possible so that I know what happened to Laura and his family. I didn't read any book before finishing this series. ( )

First sentence: It was January in northern New York State, sixty-seven years ago. Snow lay deep everywhere. It loaded the bare limbs of oaks and maples and beeches, it bent the green boughs of cedars and spruces down into the drifts. Billows of snow covered the fields and the snow fences.

Premise/plot: Farmer Boy is the second book (technically) in the Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder. (The first book is Little House in the Big Woods). The book (fictionally) chronicles Almanzo Wilder's childhood. (Presumably based on stories he told his wife through the years.) I believe it covers roughly one year of his life. It begins and ends in (different) winter(s). The focus, as you can imagine, is on his farm life. He spends a lot of time with horses, cows, pigs, and various crops like corn, wheat, pumpkins, etc. There's also a chapter on cutting ice. (I couldn't help but think of Almanzo hauling ice in the television show).

My thoughts: I must have read the original series a dozen times growing up. And I did always enjoy Almanzo entering the story in The Long Winter. But I never read the second book. Never. I just didn't see the appeal. It was about a boy, a farm boy, a boy who spent way too much time with livestock and crops.

In January, one of the FB groups I am in is challenging members to read children's classics. The catch??? It has to be a previously unread children's classic. I immediately thought of Farmer Boy.

Was I right to skip it? Probably. It is all subjective, I know. Plenty of girls--plenty of kids--go through a horse phase, where they read anything/everything with horses. That never happened to me. I never went through a horse phase. And this book is only about a step above watching grass grow. In my opinion.

I do think it provided a window into the past. And in some ways, two windows into the past. Readers can get a glimpse into Almanzo's childhood. (If my math serves, roughly 1866/1867). But readers also get a glimpse into the 1930s. People certainly viewed the world different in 1866 than they do now...and same with the early 1930s. You can't expect today's values and viewpoints to be present in a book written in 1933...especially when that book was telling the story of a boy growing up in the 1860s. ( )