Book Birthdays celebrate one year of a book’s life in reviews, social media posts, and more. This month we’re saying Happy First Book Birthday to Too Good to Be Altogether Lost: Rediscovering Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House Books (Nebraska, 2025) by Pamela Smith Hill.
About the Book:
Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of the well-known Little House series, wrote stories from her childhood because they were “too good to be altogether lost.” And those stories seemed far from being lost during the remainder of her lifetime and through most of the twentieth century. They were translated into dozens of languages; generations of children read them at school; and dedicated readers made pilgrimages to the settings of the Little House books.
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.
A Word from the Author:
Early on a Sunday morning last July, my mobile phone alerted me to a text message. It read, “Congratulations on the good review in The Washington Post.”
The Washington Post?
Despite the congratulatory text, I feared the worst from the reviewer. Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books had fallen out of favor with the literary establishment well before 2018, when the American Library Association stripped Wilder’s name from the literary legacy medal created in her honor. She was widely perceived as a racist and literary fraud. Although Too Good to Be Altogether Lost addresses these issues directly, I expected the prevailing assumptions about Wilder and her work would influence the book’s reception with reviewers—if they chose to review it at all. So with great trepidation, I went online to read the review.
“‘Little House’ is troubling,” the headline read, but “that’s why it’s valuable.” And a few days later, the Wall Street Journal’s review appeared under the headline, “Why Laura Ingalls Wilder’s series of historical novels for young readers remains essential.” My fears, as it turned out, were unfounded.
Last year’s launch for Too Good to Be Altogether Lost was an author’s dream. I signed books for two hours at LauraPalooza, was reunited with one of my old English literature professors at the South Dakota Festival of Books, and discussed Wilder’s work on one podcast after another throughout 2025. These conversations have continued into 2026, thanks, in part, to the recent Netflix release of the new Little House on The Prairie television series.
On this first birthday of Too Good to Be Altogether Lost, it appears that interest in Wilder’s work may be resurging. I can only hope this renewed interest will encourage new Wilder scholarship and send more readers to their independent booksellers or public libraries to discover—or rediscover—the Little House books. They are too good to be altogether lost.
Reviews:
“In Too Good to Be Altogether Lost, Pamela Smith Hill
makes a cogent and delightful case for, as she puts it, ‘rediscovering Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House Books.'”—Meghan Cox Gurdon, Wall Street Journal
“Hill makes a strong case that the powerful, complicated Little House books can teach us lessons about how we came to be who we are.”—Charlotte Gordon, The Washington Post
“Hill’s unique organizational structure enables her to devote considerable attention to each of the nine Little House books, enabling readers to consider Wilder’s series in its entirety and each work individually.”—Miranda A. Green-Barteet, Missouri Historical Review
“With its prodigious research and readable, suspenseful style, Too Good to Be Altogether Lost deserves a place on everyone’s shelf, whether or not the ‘Little House’ books are already on it.”—Jan Kilby, Washington Independent Review of Books
In the Media:
Excerpt in Behind the Book
Awards:
Named a Choice 2025 Outstanding Academic Title
UNP blog 