Saturday, November 11, 2006
New Dawn on Rocky Ridge
by Roger Lea MacBride
I have mixed feelings about this book, the sixth volume of Little House: The Rose Years series. (It used to be called The Rocky Ridge years until they decided to make the Little House spin-offs span five generations.) In it our heroine, Rose Wilder, becomes a teenager. She's moody, rebellious, and generally not as lovable as the Rose of years gone by. The minor characters have also changed. You see less of the friends and neighbors from Rocky Ridge farm and more of the townfolk of Mansfield, Missouri. The town seems to have a greater percentage of jerks than the surrounding countryside. On the plus side, Rose steps aside for a couple of chapters as the story follows her mother Laura (confusingly called Mama) as she travels back to South Dakota to visit her parents and sisters. Technically, it's bad storytelling to change the focus like that. But since my interest in the series stems from my enjoyment of the original Little House books, the two chapter departure only seems good and right. Anyway, when one follows a series, you have to be a bit more tolerant of volumes that aren't quite as good as the rest, so I'd have to advise folks to check this one out.
LibraryThing link
I have mixed feelings about this book, the sixth volume of Little House: The Rose Years series. (It used to be called The Rocky Ridge years until they decided to make the Little House spin-offs span five generations.) In it our heroine, Rose Wilder, becomes a teenager. She's moody, rebellious, and generally not as lovable as the Rose of years gone by. The minor characters have also changed. You see less of the friends and neighbors from Rocky Ridge farm and more of the townfolk of Mansfield, Missouri. The town seems to have a greater percentage of jerks than the surrounding countryside. On the plus side, Rose steps aside for a couple of chapters as the story follows her mother Laura (confusingly called Mama) as she travels back to South Dakota to visit her parents and sisters. Technically, it's bad storytelling to change the focus like that. But since my interest in the series stems from my enjoyment of the original Little House books, the two chapter departure only seems good and right. Anyway, when one follows a series, you have to be a bit more tolerant of volumes that aren't quite as good as the rest, so I'd have to advise folks to check this one out.
LibraryThing link
Labels: CheckItOut, RogerLeaMacBride
// posted by John @ 6:13 AM 
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