Pamela Smith Hill is a New York Times best-selling editor, author, educator, and expert on Laura Ingalls Wilder. She has taught young adult literature and creative and professional writing at universities in Washington, Oregon, and Colorado, as well as classes on Laura Ingalls Wilder through Missouri State University. Hill has been interviewed for multiple documentaries on Wilder and has appeared on C-SPAN, NPR, PBS, and the BBC for her expertise. As well as three novels for young adults, her books include Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography and Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Writer’s Life. Her newest book, Too Good to Be Altogether Lost: Rediscovering Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House Books (Nebraska, 2025) was published last month.

In Too Good to Be Altogether Lost, Wilder expert Pamela Smith Hill dives back into the Little House books, closely examining Wilder’s text, her characters, and their stories. Hill reveals that these gritty, emotionally complex novels depict a realistic coming of age for a girl in the American West. This realism in Wilder’s novels, once perceived as a fatal flaw, can lead to essential discussions not only about the past but about the present—and the underlying racism young people encounter when reading today. Hill’s fresh approach to Wilder’s books, including surprising revelations about Wilder’s novel The First Four Years, shows how this author forever changed the literary landscape of children’s and young adult literature in ways that remain vital and relevant today.

1. Ambition

Sustaining a Dream

Laura Elizabeth Ingalls was born on February 7, 1867, in Pepin County, Wisconsin, to a family that valued education, books, and music. She described her father, Charles Ingalls, as “a hunter and trapper, a musician and poet.” Her mother, Caroline Ingalls, had been a schoolteacher before she married, and instilled in her four daughters—Mary Amelia, Laura, Caroline Celestia, and Grace Pearl—a passion for learning. They were a literary family, despite their poverty.

As a preschooler, Laura taught herself to read, thanks to her older sister Mary, who “would show me the letters and the words she had learned that day [at school], until, to Ma’s surprise, I could read as well as Mary.” Laura vividly remembered the gift she received for her fifth birthday, “a pretty little book of verses called ‘The Floweret.’” The family often read aloud together, and their modest library followed them across the frontier—from Wisconsin, possibly to Missouri, then to Kansas, back to Wisconsin, on to Minnesota, east to Iowa, back to Minnesota, and finally to Dakota Territory, where Charles and Caroline permanently settled in 1879. Laura was twelve. The town of De Smet sprang up around them. Its thriving township school—and one teacher in particular—would inspire Laura Ingalls, top student in the class, to become Laura Ingalls Wilder, the influential, groundbreaking American author. The transformation took almost fifty years. Wilder’s ambition to write, born as a teenager, spanned decades and never quite failed her.

In the fall of 1883, sixteen-year-old Laura Ingalls faced a dilemma common to most high school students: completing an assignment she didn’t understand. She’d missed school the day before, when her teacher, V. S. L. (Ven) Owen, had assigned her class to write their “first compositions” on the subject of “Ambition.” Unlike her classmates, who “had prepared their papers at home the night before,” she had to write hers quickly in class—before Mr. Owen called on her to read her composition aloud. Adding to the pressure: she feared she’d lose her standing in class if her composition failed. Mr. Owen felt she “had a wonderful mind and memory.” She didn’t want to disappoint him or herself.

A Flawed Original

Writing an original composition was an unusual assignment in 1883, even for advanced students. Usually they were expected to memorize and then recite multiplication tables, important dates and events in American history, or long passages from such books as The Independent Fifth Reader. But Ven Owen was an unusual educator. Hired as teacher and principal of the De Smet’s township school no. 2 in September 1883, he was neat and dapper with a quick, sharp intellect. He ran an efficient school but challenged scholars with innovative techniques and assignments—like writing an original composition.

“I couldn’t make a start,” Wilder remembered years later, “and in despair went to the dictionary to see what it had to say about ambition, hoping to get an idea.” She went back to her desk and wrote quickly.

Her original draft began, “Ambition denotes a desire of preferment, or of honor. It is also used to denote an inordinate desire of power or eminence.” From there, Wilder turned to the word’s origins but soon realized something wasn’t right. She drew lines across her first draft, turned the page over, and started again. Instinctively, she had recognized an essential principle of professional writing: ruthless revision.

For her second and final draft, Wilder interpreted the dictionary’s definition more personally: “Ambition is, like other good things, a good only when used in moderation.” She embellished this idea and for her new conclusion, turned to Shakespeare: “Ambition is a good servant but a hard master; and if you think it is likely to become your master: I would say to you in the world of the immortal Shakespeare: Cromwell, I charge thee fling away ambition, by the sin fell the angels.” Wilder had apparently written her revision so quickly that she unintentionally wrote “world” instead of “words.” She finished just in time to read her composition aloud:

Mr. Owen looked sharply at me when I had finished reading it, and said, “You have written compositions before.”

“Oh no Sir!” said I, “This is my first.”

“Well you should write more of them,” he said. “I wouldn’t have believed any one could have done so well the first time.”