Scrubbing Laura Ingalls Wilder Is A Dangerous Step Toward Ignorance

The Federalist

Pretending things that make us uncomfortable never happened isn’t going to make America better, or make American children more informed.

"Few people are unfamiliar with the Little House on the Prairie book series by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Her simple retellings of her childhood memories of life in the big woods of Wisconsin, to the prairie of the Dakota territories, to her life as a married frontier wife have captured the imaginations of generations of readers.

"Wilder’s stories of her family’s journey west in a covered wagon, the careful details of the minutiae of their daily lives, and her descriptions of an America most commonly seen in history books should, without question, cement her place in history as a talented and important author. Wilder’s books also have served to introduce children for decades to disability issues, specifically blindness, and are an important look at the positive difference a supportive family can make for people with special needs. The enduring nature of her work is a testimony to her ability to write, and that talent and ability to capture reader’s minds and hearts led the Associate for Library Service to Children to name a literary award after her in 1952. Now her presence has been stripped from the the award, which has been renamed the Children’s Literature Legacy Award.

"Wilder’s removal came after repeated rounds of criticism that her books, written about her girlhood in the 1800s, contained racist and offensive characterizations most commonly of Native Americans. These complaints started in the 50s with a reader writing into Harper, the publisher of Wilder’s books, about sentences that she disagreed with. The publisher responded by rewording sections. These gentle rewordings quelled critiques until more recently, when statutes and school names became battle grounds for removing the presence of people with problematic parts of their history. No longer can Confederate leaders of the past have any public monuments. Their part in the Civil War renders them best forgotten, ripped from places where their names and images could remind people of uncomfortable parts of history. And here is where Wilder’s name and image are now being stripped away." . . .

 What is the origin of this movement to delete America's history as a nation? This smacks too much of Stalin's regime airbrushing banished (or murdered) officials out of Soviet photos.