Which Order
There are two answers, and they only disagree in one spot.
I checked the order against two book-list sources and the book’s own text, and I’ll tell you where they differ. This is as of November twenty twenty-six, and the one book I read in full is Little House on the Prairie.
The Nine Books
The main series is nine books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Here they are in the order they were published.
One. Little House in the Big Woods, nineteen thirty-two. Two. Farmer Boy, nineteen thirty-three. Three. Little House on the Prairie, nineteen thirty-five. Four. On the Banks of Plum Creek, nineteen thirty-seven. Five. By the Shores of Silver Lake, nineteen thirty-nine.
Six. The Long Winter, nineteen forty. Seven. Little Town on the Prairie, nineteen forty-one. Eight. These Happy Golden Years, nineteen forty-three. And nine. The First Four Years, which came out in nineteen seventy-one.
My copy’s own book jacket calls them the nine Little House books, so that is the count.
The Easy Answer
The easy answer is publication order, which is the order I just read out. The books came out in that order, and the family story moves forward through them with one exception.
The exception is book two, Farmer Boy. It isn’t about Laura. It follows Almanzo Wilder’s boyhood on a farm in New York, who she later marries. The prairie book article I checked says plainly that Farmer Boy is not a sequel and not related to the Prairie story.
Publication Versus Chronological
So here is the difference. If you read in story order, Laura’s books all come in the same order, and Farmer Boy is the one that moves.
The list I checked, from a book-list site, puts Little House on the Prairie before Farmer Boy, so Farmer Boy lands third. Sources disagree on the exact spot, and I found no neat rule. Either order is fine.
My pick, and this is my opinion, is publication order. You meet Laura as a very small girl in the Big Woods, then you meet Almanzo, then you follow her west.
Where Prairie Fits
Where does Little House on the Prairie fit? It’s book three. It was published on September nineteenth, nineteen thirty-five, by Harper and Brothers, and it is set in Kansas in eighteen sixty-nine and seventy, in what the book calls Indian Territory. That’s reported by the book’s reference entry.
Chapter one opens with the family leaving. They drive away from the little house in the Big Woods of Wisconsin, and the book says they never saw that little house again.
You don’t need Big Woods to follow it. The first chapter tells you who everyone is, and Pa, Ma, Mary, Laura and Baby Carrie are all introduced by name. I’d call it a perfectly good starting point.
Book by Book
Here’s a one line guide to each book, using only what I can confirm.
Big Woods is the Wisconsin start. Farmer Boy is Almanzo in New York. Prairie is the Kansas year. Plum Creek is the next in line, and the TV series puts its farm on Plum Creek, near Walnut Grove.
Silver Lake, The Long Winter, Little Town and These Happy Golden Years follow the family onward. The First Four Years covers her early married life with Almanzo on a South Dakota farm, and it is last in every order I found.
How Long Is Prairie
If you’re planning a read aloud, here’s the size. Little House on the Prairie has twenty-six chapters, and by my count the story is roughly forty-eight thousand words. At a normal reading pace that’s about three hours, so a chapter a night takes a little under a month.
The chapters run from about thirteen hundred words to about twenty-nine hundred, so each one fits a bedtime. The longest is chapter five, where the house goes up, and the shortest is chapter sixteen, the chimney fire.
Which Edition
The book was first published with illustrations by Helen Sewell. A nineteen fifty-three edition was illustrated by Garth Williams, and that’s the version most people picture. That’s reported.
The text I read also differs from the original in one small, reported way. In the first chapter it says there were no settlers in the West, only Indians. Reportedly, the original said no people, and the publisher changed that word in nineteen fifty-three.
Other Books With Her Name
There are more books out there that aren’t part of the nine. The reference entry lists On the Way Home, from nineteen sixty-two, West from Home, from nineteen seventy-four, Old Town in the Green Groves in two thousand two, and A Little House Traveler in two thousand six.
Those sit outside the main nine, and two of them came out after Wilder’s death, so you can skip them until you want more.
What About the TV Series
If you came from the TV shows, the order matters less. The NBC series began with a pilot movie in nineteen seventy-four based on the third book, and then spent nine seasons telling its own stories. The Netflix series, released July ninth, twenty twenty-six, is reported to draw on Wilder’s Little House books.
So reading the books in order does not map neatly onto either show. That’s one reason I made a separate book versus show video.
The Short Version
So here’s the short version. Read in publication order, one through nine, and leave the extra books for later. If you want the strict story order, read Big Woods, then Prairie, then Farmer Boy, then carry on.
And a note for parents. The jacket on my copy says ages eight to twelve. The books deal with the frontier and with Native Americans in ways you’ll want to read first, and my parents guide covers that.
Which book are you starting with? Tell me in the comments, and thanks for watching.
