Garth Williams

Ma and the girls follow Pa west by train where they make their home at a rough railroad camp and plan for their own homestead.

A year in the life of two young girls growing up on the Wisconsin frontier, as they help their mother with the daily chores, enjoy their father's stories and singing, and share special occasions when they get together with relatives or neighbors.

While Laura Ingalls grows up in a little house on the western prairie, Almanzo Wilder is living on a big farm in New York State. Almanzo and his brother and sisters help with the summer planting and fall harvest. In winter there is wood to be chopped and great slabs of ice to be cut from the river and stored. Almanzo wishes for just one thing--his very own horse--but he must prove that he is ready for such a big responsibility.

After an October blizzard, Laura's family moves from the claim shanty into town for the winter, a winter that an Indian has predicted will be seven months of bad weather. Newbery honor book: 1941.