Laura Ingalls Wilder

A couple of years ago, author Wendy McClure made an impromptu revisit of a childhood favorite: the Little House series of books written by Laura Ingalls Wilder. In an interview with Knee-Jerk, McClure discusses her re-discovery of the classic childrens’ series and the work that they inspired. “…I was always kind of afraid to go back and reread them, because I feared that they wouldn’t be as good as I remembered,” she explains. “I think I wanted to re-immerse myself and see where it went…I was reading the books and loving them and started telling everyone I knew, ‘It’d be fun to see these places and write a book about it sometime’.” Supportive prodding from a friend in the publishing industry prompted McClure to write The Wilder Life (set to be released in early 2011), a travelogue of sorts, about the author’s experiences visiting historical sites related to the books. “I liked the idea of seeing all these places I felt I knew so well but had never actually been to.”

“A lot of times the narrative will mix personal experience with relevant history and literary history and cultural observations,” says McClure, describing the book’s format. “I think what appealed to me from the very start is that I got to use all this surface knowledge that I’ve acquired over the years: Writing about pop culture on and off helped in writing about the [LHOP] movie and TV adaptations, and I also drew on my knowledge of children’s books…The world of the books is an imaginary world, of course, but all the same, I wanted to explore it and see what its boundaries are – to see where it was similar to real life and where it wasn’t.”