Little House in the Big Woods is the first of the eight books in the Little House series. In Little House on the Prairie, the Ingalls family leaves the Wisconsin woods to settle the wide Kansas grassland. The book shows the adventures of the journey as well as the building of a new house and furniture. On the Banks of Plum Creek finds the family living in Minnesota, where the girls go to school and the crops prosper until grasshoppers destroy the vegetation. In the next book, By the Shores of Silver Lake, the family has moved to Dakota Territory.

Laura has taken on increased responsibility because of Mary's blindness and the arrival of a baby sister, Grace. The Long Winter, one of the most highly praised titles of the series, describes the blizzard-ridden winter of 1880-1881, when the new community of De Smet...