On the Banks of Plum Creek

Location of the dugout "On the Banks of Plum Creek" in Minnesota

Having left their little house on the Kansas prairie, the Ingalls family travels by covered wagon to Minnesota and settles on the banks of Plum Creek. Pa trades 2 ponies for a dugout and a stable. Later, Pa trades for two new horses as Christmas presents for his family, which Laura and her sister, Mary name Sam and David. Pa soon builds a new, above-ground, wooden house for his family, trusting that their first crop of wheat will pay for the lumber and materials.

Now that they live near a town, Laura and Mary go to school for the first time. There they make friends, and also meet the town storekeeper's daughter, Nellie Oleson, who makes fun of Laura and Mary for being "country girls." Laura and Mary attend a party at the Oleson's home. There, Nellie acts selfishly and grabs the biggest piece of cake. Later, Ma has Laura and Mary invite all the girls (including Nellie) to a party at their house to reciprocate where Nellie is mean to Jack, the Ingall's dog, and speaks mean to Ma so her legs get covered with bloodsuckers in return for what she did.

The Ingalls go through very hard times when grasshoppers decimate the much-anticipated wheat crop, and lay so many eggs that there is no hope of a crop the following year. For two harvest seasons, Pa is forced to walk three hundred miles east to find work on farms that escaped the grasshopper plague. Laura and her sister have to quit school because it closed when the grasshoppers arrived.

Pa becomes lost near their home during a severe four-day blizzard. Laura and Mary help Ma well. Soon, Pa comes home and they learn that all that time, Pa had been at the creek, close to the house! So, the novel ends with the happy family reunited on Christmas Eve.

Virginia Kirkus had handled Wilder's debut novel Little House in the Big Woods for Harper & Brothers as its book editor from 1926 to 1932. In Kirkus Reviews, her semi-monthly bulletin from 1933, she awarded this novel a starred review (as she did its one predecessor and two successors, books 3 to 6 and no others). "If anything, it is better than her enchanting Little House in the Big Woods. ...Laura is always in trouble, but a staunch young person when brought to the text. It is perfect Americana."[2]

The novel was the first of five Newbery Honor books for Wilder, books 4 to 8 in the series.[4]

In 1997, the novel was challenged by two parents from Winnipeg, Canada who took issue with the portrayal of Native Americans in it and wanted a local school division to pull it from its libraries and lessons. The word "Indian", referring to Native Americans, appears 12 times in it, most of them dealing with the Ingalls' time in Indian Territory. However, at one point Mary tells Laura to keep her sunbonnet on or "You'll be as brown as an Indian, and what will the town girls think of us?" She also says, "I wish I was an Indian and never had to wear clothes!" The complaint was eventually withdrawn.[5]

After failing at farming in the Dakotas in the 1890s—drought, illness, and fire contributing—Wilder moved with her husband, Almanzo, and young daughter, Rose, to the Ozarks in Missouri. Decades later, she, who had been writing columns and editing for a regional farm newspaper, was encouraged by Rose to write a memoir of growing up on the frontier for national serialization—mostly for financial reasons.[6]

Wilder wrote Pioneer Girl, an adult version of her autobiography, before she wrote her book series. When it proved unsellable to publishers, Rose suggested they rethink it, leading to the series. Some of the real-life events were either softened or taken out entirely for a younger audience.[7]

• On the Banks of Plum Creek at Faded Page (Canada)
• Little House Books at HarperCollins Children's Books