These Happy Golden Years by Laura Ingalls Wilder.
Title: These Happy Golden Years.
Author: Laura Ingalls Wilder.
Genre: Literature, autobiographical, Western, family saga, children's lit, YA, survival, bildungsroman.
Country: U.S.
Language: English.
Publication Date: March 17, 1943.
Summary: Spanning from 1882-1885. 15-year-old Laura lives apart from her family for the first time, teaching school in a claim shanty twelve miles from home. She is very homesick, but keeps at it so that she can help pay for her sister Mary's tuition at the college for the blind. During school vacations Laura has fun with her singing lessons, going on sleigh rides, and best of all, helping Almanzo Wilder drive his new buggy. And friendship soon turns to love for Laura and Almanzo.
My rating: 8.5/10.
♥ She had not known before that it takes two to make a smile.
♥ “I hope that each of you can get more schooling, but if you cannot, you can study at home as Lincoln did. An education is worth striving for, and if you cannot have much help in getting one, you can each help yourself to an education if you try.”
♥ Ambition is a good servant but a bad master. So long as we control our ambition, it is good, but if there is danger of our being ruled by it, then I would say in the words of Shakespeare, “Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition. By that sin fell the angels.”
♥ “Well, you have always been so nice to me, I am glad of a chance to pay some of it back,” Florence told her.
Laura remembered what Ma had said about luck, and she thought to herself: “I believe we make most of our luck without intending to.”
♥ Laura was silent again. Then she summoned all her courage and said, “Almanzo, I must ask you something. Do you want me to promise to obey you?”
Soberly he answered, “Of course not. I know it is in the wedding ceremony, but it is only something that women say. I never knew one that did it, nor any decent man that wanted her to.”