Little Town on the Prairie

infobox Book |
name = Little Town on the Prairie
title_orig = Little Town on the Prairie
translator =


image_caption =
author = Laura Ingalls Wilder
illustrator =
cover_artist =
country = United States
language = English
series = Little House
genre = Historical fiction, Junior fiction
publisher =
release_date = 1941
english_release_date =
media_type = Print
pages =
isbn =
preceded_by = The Long Winter
followed_by = These Happy Golden Years

"Little Town on the Prairie" by Laura Ingalls Wilder was published in 1941 and is the seventh out of nine books written in her "Little House" series. Also known as "The Laura Years", this book is based on Laura's adolescence spent near De Smet, South Dakota, in the late 19th century. The book begins with the spring after the Long Winter, and ends as Laura becomes a schoolteacher so she can help her sister, Mary, stay at the school for the blind in Vinton, Iowa.

Laura takes a job in town sewing shirts to help earn money for Mary's college education. She hates the work but never complains, and earns $1.50 per week for a total of $9.00 before the spring rush ends. The family gets a setting of chicks from their friends, Mr. and Mrs. Boast, and things are looking up. Pa plants a corn crop for cash, which is growing beautifully until blackbirds desecrate the crops. The family eats the blackbirds that Pa shoots, but it's impossible to kill them all and they lose the crop. Laura thinks that Mary won't be able to go to college that year, but Pa sells a heifer and he and Ma bring Mary to college.

While they're gone, Laura is in charge of the house and finds it hard to cope, especially because to distract herself and her younger sisters from their sorrow of Mary's departure, they decide to do all the fall housecleaning. It's a grueling week but they finish in time.

The family moves to town for the winter, to protect themselves in case it's another hard winter, but it turns out not to be. Laura and Carrie attend school in town and Laura is reunited with her friends Minnie Johnson and Mary Power, and meets a new girl, Ida Brown. Laura is shocked to see that Nellie Oleson, her old nemesis from Plum Creek, has moved to De Smet and is attending the school. Nellie turns the teacher, Eliza Wilder, against Laura and Miss Wilder loses control of the school for a time.

The winter is a "whirl of gaiety" with literary society meetings, parties and church socials. Laura find she is depressed, missing Mary and not wanting to study. She neglects her school work for a period of several months but then spends the entire summer back on the claim, studying hard. By the next winter, she finds herself escorted home several nights in a rowfrom church meetings and a school exhibition by the older Almanzo Wilder and doesn't know what to think. On Christmas Eve, a surprise visit from the superintendent leaves her with a teaching certificate and a job 12 miles south of town.