Hello, my name is Finn, and I'm going to help you understand this book.
Here it is, explained like you are 10:
Little Sister is a small girl who lives on a farm in Indiana with her big family. Her favourite person in the whole world is her big brother, Laddie. He is tall and kind and strong, and he can do anything. But Laddie has a secret. He has fallen in love, and he cannot tell the family who the girl is. Little Sister watches everything, understands some of it, and tells us the whole story.
The story is told by Little Sister, the youngest child in a big Indiana farm family. She follows her hero, her big brother Laddie, everywhere she can. Laddie has fallen in love with a girl whose family does not approve of his, so the love must stay secret. Around that secret the whole farm year turns: work, church, neighbours, troubles with money and pride, all seen by a small girl who understands more than the grown ups think, and less than she believes.
Gene Stratton-Porter built the book as one long novel told in a child's voice, in chapters that each hold a small adventure or discovery. The setting is her own childhood countryside, described plant by plant and bird by bird. The secret love story gives the book its pull, while the farm life gives it warmth, and the two are woven together chapter by chapter.
It works because the voice is so alive: funny, devoted and completely believing. You see love, pride and forgiveness the way a child sees them, simply and strongly. It also preserves a vanished way of life through people you come to care about, one reason it was among its author's biggest bestsellers.
Laddie is narrated by Little Sister, the youngest of a large brood of children on an Indiana farm, and at its centre stands her big brother Laddie, her hero in all things, strong, kind and secretly in love. Gene Stratton-Porter published the novel in 1913, drawing on her own rural childhood, and it became one of her biggest bestsellers. Its charm is its double vision: courtship, pride and money seen through a child's devoted, half understanding eyes.
Laddie is narrated by Little Sister, the youngest of the Stratton family, a brood of children on an Indiana farm, and at its centre stands her big brother Laddie, her hero in all things, strong, kind and secretly in love. Gene Stratton-Porter published the novel in 1913, drawing on her own rural childhood, and it became one of her biggest bestsellers, warm with farm life, family loyalty and a romance the narrator only half understands. The book's charm is its double vision: adult matters of courtship, pride and money seen through a child's devoted eyes, reported faithfully and understood just imperfectly enough to be funny and touching at once.
Starvard carries Laddie because it is one of the great American farm novels for family reading, and because Stratton-Porter, once among the most loved authors in the country, deserves her readers back. The book earns its place the honest way: a whole vanished countryside, a big family rendered member by member, and sibling love written without a trace of irony. Readers who enjoy warm, unhurried stories, anyone curious about rural America before the First World War, and families looking for a novel to share aloud will all settle happily into this one.
Edition: Text: Project Gutenberg ebook 286.
Source: Project Gutenberg. Published 1913. Author died 1924. Public domain. Share this book: WhatsApp
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