How to Read the Little House on the Prairie Books in Order Without Getting Confused

Reading the little house on the prairie books in order sounds like it should be a total breeze, right? You just grab the first one and go. Except, it isn't actually that simple because Laura Ingalls Wilder didn't exactly write them as a straightforward, day-by-day diary, and the publishing world has since added a bunch of spin-offs that muddy the waters.

If you’re looking to revisit your childhood or introduce a kid to Laura’s world, you’ve gotta decide if you want the "published" order or the "chronological" order. They aren't the same. Honestly, most people just dive in and get turned around when characters suddenly age three years between chapters or a whole town disappears.

Let's get into the weeds of how these books actually fit together.

The Original Series: The "Canon" Sequence

Most fans consider the core "Little House" series to be the nine books published by Harper & Brothers (now HarperCollins). These are the ones that feature the iconic Garth Williams illustrations—you know, the ones where the faces look soft and the prairie looks endless.

1. Little House in the Big Woods (1932): This is where it starts. Laura is just a tiny thing in a log cabin in Wisconsin. It’s cozy. It’s mostly about hickory chips and butchering hogs and staying safe from bears.
2. Farmer Boy (1933): This is the massive curveball. It’s technically the second book published, but it isn't about Laura at all. It’s about her future husband, Almanzo Wilder, growing up in New York. If you read it second, it feels like a weird commercial break. Many people skip it and come back to it later.
3. Little House on the Prairie (1935): The big one. The family moves to Kansas. This is where the TV show got its name, though the show and the book are basically distant cousins who haven't spoken in years.
4. On the Banks of Plum Creek (1937): The move to Walnut Grove, Minnesota. Dugout houses and grasshopper plagues. This is probably the most "exciting" book for younger readers because so much goes wrong.
5. By the Shores of Silver Lake (1939): The family heads to the Dakota Territory. This book marks a huge shift in tone because Laura is growing up. She’s becoming a "young lady," which she mostly hates.
6. The Long Winter (1940): Brutal. If you want to feel cold in the middle of July, read this. It’s a survival story about the winter of 1880–1881. It’s arguably the best-written book in the series.
7. Little Town on the Prairie (1941): Life in De Smet. Socials, school, and the beginning of the "courtship" with Almanzo.
8. These Happy Golden Years (1943): Laura becomes a teacher at fifteen, which is wild to think about now. It ends with her marriage.
9. The First Four Years (1971): This was published long after Laura died. It’s a rougher, unpolished manuscript about her early marriage. It’s much bleaker than the others.

Why the Order Actually Matters

You might think, "Who cares? It's just a kids' series." But there’s a real evolution in the writing. Little House in the Big Woods is written for a very young audience. The sentences are simple. The world is small.

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As the series progresses, the prose matures. By the time you hit The Long Winter, the themes are much darker—starvation, isolation, and the terrifying power of nature. Reading them out of order breaks that "aging up" effect that Wilder and her daughter/editor Rose Wilder Lane worked so hard to craft.

Wait, we have to talk about Rose for a second. There is a huge literary debate about how much Rose actually wrote. Some historians, like William Holtz, argue Rose was basically a ghostwriter. Others, like Pamela Smith Hill (who edited Laura's autobiography, Pioneer Girl), say it was a collaboration where Laura provided the "soul" and Rose provided the "structure." Either way, when you read the little house on the prairie books in order, you are watching two women bridge the gap between 19th-century memory and 20th-century storytelling.

The Farmer Boy Dilemma

Should you read Farmer Boy second? Honestly? Probably not.

If you’re reading to a child, sticking it between Big Woods and Prairie usually kills the momentum. You’ve just gotten attached to Laura, Mary, and Jack the dog, and suddenly you’re sent to a farm in New York to read about a boy eating donuts and training oxen. It’s a great book—the food descriptions alone are legendary—but it works better as a "prequel" read after book five or six.

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If you want the strict chronological experience of the Ingalls/Wilder saga, Farmer Boy actually takes place before Laura is even born or while she's an infant. But reading it first would be like watching a movie about a main character's husband's childhood before you even meet the main character.

The Prequels and the "Expanded Universe"

If you finish the main nine and still want more, things get messy. There are dozens of "Little House" books now.

There’s the Martha Years (Laura’s great-grandmother in Scotland), the Charlotte Years (her grandmother), and the Caroline Years (her mother, Ma). These weren't written by Laura, obviously. They were written by authors like Maria D. Wilkes and Celia Wilkins. They’re fine, but they feel like historical fiction rather than the "fictionalized memoir" style of the originals.

Then there’s the Rose Years by Roger Lea MacBride. These follow Laura’s daughter. They have a very different vibe—more "Little House on the West Coast"—but for completionists, they are the logical next step in the timeline.

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Spotting the Differences: Fact vs. Fiction

When you follow the little house on the prairie books in order, you start to notice the gaps. Laura shifted the timeline for the sake of a good story. For example, she completely left out her brother, Freddie, who died as an infant. She also skipped a whole period of time when the family lived in Burr Oak, Iowa, helping run a hotel.

Why? Because she wanted to create a narrative of "The West" and the "pioneer spirit." The Iowa years were a period of failure and poverty that didn't fit the myth she was building. If you’re a real history nerd, you should pick up Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography. It’s the raw, unedited version of her life. It’s fascinating, messy, and definitely not for kids.

Actionable Tips for New Readers

If you're starting this journey today, here is the best way to handle it:

• Stick to the original sequence for the first read. Don't worry about the Martha or Caroline books until you've finished the main nine.
• Move Farmer Boy. Read it between On the Banks of Plum Creek and By the Shores of Silver Lake. This creates a nice bridge as Laura starts to notice "the Wilder boy" in the later books.
• Look at the maps. Get a map of the US and track the moves. It’s insane how much they traveled by wagon. Wisconsin to Kansas to Minnesota to Iowa (unmentioned) back to Minnesota to South Dakota.
• Discuss the controversies. The books contain depictions of Native Americans and Osage land that are, to put it mildly, reflective of 1880s prejudices. Use these as teaching moments rather than just glossing over them. The American Library Association even renamed the "Laura Ingalls Wilder Award" to the "Children's Literature Legacy Award" in 2018 because of how these books handle race. It’s worth talking about.
• Visit the sites. If you’re ever in the Midwest, the homestead in De Smet, South Dakota, is legit. You can see the "Big Slough" and the locations from the books. It makes the reading experience 100 times better.

The best way to experience these stories is to treat them as a time capsule. They aren't perfect history, and they aren't perfect novels. They are something in between—a memory of a world that was disappearing even as Laura was writing about it. Start with the woods of Wisconsin and just let the story take you West.

Next Steps for Your Reading Journey

1. Check your editions. If you want the classic experience, look for the 60th-anniversary editions or older used copies that feature the Garth Williams art. The newer "simplified" versions for very young children lose most of the charm and the grit of the original prose.
2. Cross-reference with Pioneer Girl. Once you finish the series, read the annotated autobiography to see what Laura "cleaned up" for her audience. It provides a much-needed layer of reality to the cozy prairie life.
3. Map the route. Open Google Maps and plot the distance from Pepin, Wisconsin, to Independence, Kansas. Seeing that 600-mile trek through the lens of a covered wagon changes your perspective on the "adventure" entirely.