The sixth volume of Laura Ingalls Wilder's nine-part Little House series was first published in 1940.
On a hot August day in 1880, at the Ingalls family estate, Laura helps her father carry hay, which is collected for the animals for the winter. While they are working, Laura finds a nest of muskrats next to the Great Swamp. Examining the burrow, papa notices: the animal has built such a thick wall for itself that papa begins to seriously worry; the winter promises to be hard. In the middle of October, the family wakes up to an unusually early blizzard, which rages around the barely insulated cottage. Soon after that, papa will receive another signal. An old Indian visits the town to warn the settlers: there will be seven months of blizzards. Papa decides to move his family to the store he built in town for the winter. In the city, Laura and Carrie attend school until the weather becomes so unpredictable that even walking to and from school becomes dangerous. Snowstorms will sweep through the city in the coming months. Food and fuel become scarce and become extremely expensive as the city depends on supplies arriving by train. But due to the snow storms, the trains no longer reach the city. Eventually, the railroad abandons all efforts to dig the trains out from under the snow, leaving the town alone until spring. In the absence of wood and coal, the family is forced to burn with hay. For weeks, they subsist on krumplin and brown bread, which is made from wheat ground in a coffee grinder. As they run out of even this scarce food, Almanzo Wilder and his friend Cap Garland, influenced by the stray news that a settler grows wheat twenty miles away in a farm, risk their lives to take wheat to the starving townspeople. The prediction turns out to be true: the blizzards last for seven months. With the spring thaw, the first train can set off, on which the family's long-awaited Christmas barrel from Reverend Alden arrives, containing clothes, gifts and a Christmas turkey. With the end of the long winter, the Ingalls family will finally have their Christmas celebration - in May...
This is how the sixth volume of the nine-part novel series continues.
This popular book series has been translated into more than 40 languages ​​and has sold 60 million copies worldwide. We recommend this fun family read for all ages.