You're listening to the Read-A-Loud Revital, the show that helps your kids fall in love with books

and helps you fall in love with homeschooling. I'm your host Sarah McKenzie and today,

I want to invite you to read one of my favorite books. It is, I think, one of the best books ever

written for children. Make-A while the sun shines. The mowing machines were

sounded cheerfully from the old buffalo wallow south of the claim shanty, where blue

stem grass stood thick and tall and paw was cutting it for hay. The sky was high and quivering

with heat over the shimmering prairie. Halfway down to sunset, the sun blazed as hotly as it noon.

The wind was scorching hot, but paw had hours of mowing yet to do before he could stop for the night.

Laura drew up a pailful of water from the well at the edge of the big slew. She rinsed the brown

jug till it was cool to her hand. Then she filled it with the fresh cool water, quirked it tightly

and started with it to the hayfield. Swarms of little white butterflies hovered over the path,

a dragonfly with gauzy wings swiftly chased a net. On the stubble of cut grass,

the striped gophers were scampering. All at once they ran for their lives and dived into their holes.

Then Laura saw a swift shadow and looked up at the eyes and the claws of a hawk overhead,

but all the little gophers were safe in their holes.

Paw was glad to see Laura with the water jug. He got down from the mowing machine and drank a

mouthful. That hits the spot, he said, and tipped up the jug again. Then he quirked it and setting

it on the ground, he covered it with cut grass. So begins the long winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder.

The long winter is the sixth book in the Little House on the Prairie series. It was first published

in 1940 and just like the others in this series, it's an autobiographical novel. Laura Ingalls

Wilder, of course, based the series on her actual life as a child, settling the West.

And this particular story, the long winter, was set on the southwestern Dakota territory

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