By the Shores of Silver Lake, by Laura Ingalls Wilder, was first published in 1939 and is the fifth of nine books written in her Little House on the Prairie series, also known as The Laura Years. The book takes place over a period of just over one year, beginning when Laura is twelve years old and the family moves to what will become De Smet, South Dakota, from Plum Creek, Minnesota. After moving to the Dakota Territory, the family first lives with relatives in a railroad camp, where Pa works as the bookkeeper. The railroad company asks the family to spend the winter in the surveyors' house to watch the equipment, and in the spring Pa files on a nearby claim. Until he can build a shelter there, the family lives in town in a store building Pa built of leftover railroad lumber. As soon as the claim shanty is in place, the family moves into it, although they will return to town during the coming winters until the claim shanty is fully weatherized some five years in the future.
Though Wilder began writing the books as autobiographical recollections, they are considered historical fiction and have won a number of literary awards. By the Shores of Silver Lake was awarded a Newbery Honor award in 1940 for exceptional children’s literature. The enduring popularity of the Little House books has inspired additional book series encompassing more generations of Wilder’s family as well as a long-running television series in the early 1970s that is still in syndication and available on DVD.
Read more about By The Shores Of Silver Lake: Story, Historical Background, Modern Influence
Famous quotes containing the words shores, silver and/or lake:
“In 1845 he built himself a small framed house on the shores of Walden Pond, and lived there two years alone, a life of labor and study. This action was quite native and fit for him. No one who knew him would tax him with affectation. He was more unlike his neighbors in his thought than in his action. As soon as he had exhausted himself that advantages of his solitude, he abandoned it.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Silver bells, silver bells,
It’s Christmas time in the city.”
—Ray Evans (b. 1915)
“They who know of no purer sources of truth, who have traced up its stream no higher, stand, and wisely stand, by the Bible and the Constitution, and drink at it there with reverence and humility; but they who behold where it comes trickling into this lake or that pool, gird up their loins once more, and continue their pilgrimage toward its fountain-head.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)