What Order to Read the Little House Books by Laura Ingalls Wilder

If you are just starting out reading the Little House books, there are a couple of different orders you can read the books in.  The first is in the original published order, as they were published with the original text and illustrations from Helen Sewell:

• Little House in the Big Woods
• Farmer Boy
• Little House on the Prairie
• On the Banks of Plum Creek
• By the Shores of Silver Lake
• The Long Winter
• Little Town on the Prairie
• These Happy Golden Years
• The First Four Years

The one wildcard in this series is Farmer Boy, as it is the only book in the series written from Almanzo’s point of view, based on when he was a young boy in New York, many years before he would later meet Laura.  Some prefer to read Farmer Boy a bit later, such as after Little House on the Prairie.  But it is advised to read it before we are re-introduced to Almanzo much later in the series.

However, there are some readers who skip over Farmer Boy entirely, or read it after the rest of the books, because it is the only book in the series not from Laura’s perspective, and some prefer not to interrupt the flow of Laura’s narrative.

When the books were re-released with the new illustrations from Garth Williams, they changed the publish order to make Little House on the Prairie the second book, with Farmer Boy being the third book in the series.