Parents and educators, here's a talk you might be interested in

[pnwmom]

about handling racism in children's literature.

http://kcur.org/post/between-pages#stream/0

[betsuni]

1. I'm reading "Pioneer Girl," the annotated autobiography of Laura Ingalls Wilder.

This sentence in "Little House on the Prairie": "There the wild animals wandered and fed as though they were in a pasture that stretched much farther than a man could see, and there were no people. Only the Indians lived there" was changed after someone wrote a letter to Wilder in 1952. "Wilder's editor responded directly to the reader: 'I must admit to you ... that no one here realized that those words read as they did. Reading them now it seems unbelievable to me that you are the only person who has picked them up and written to us about them in the twenty years since the book was published.' Nordstrom contacted Wilder and proposed a change. 'You are perfectly right,' Wilder responded, 'and have my permission to make the correction you suggest. It was a stupid blunder of mine.'"

I bought "Pioneer Girl" because of an online discussion from a few years ago wherein some people had read a book insisting Wilder's daughter Rose Wilder Lane was the real author of the Little House book and Laura was a big phoney or something. Not. Now there's proof that it's Laura's work except for some editing. I knew it.

I couldn't listen to that linked talk for very long, I'm just assuming she mentioned the Little House books. Rising tones at the end of sentences that aren't questions, "like," "um," "you know," etc., really irritate me. Those affectations aren't going away, ever, but unfortunately I just can't stand it.