In Little Town on the Prairie, Laura Ingalls attends Ben Woodworth‘s birthday party, and each guest is served an orange to eat along with their slice of cake. Laura comments that “she had once eaten part of an orange, so she knew how good an orange tastes.” (See Chapter 20, “The Birthday Party.”)
The trouble is, there had been no previous mention of oranges at all in any “Little House” book, so where had Laura once tasted one?
The answer lies in the manuscript for On the Banks of Plum Creek. Edited out of the church Christmas tree chapter was the fact that “there was a little bag of candy, a bag of popcorn and an orange for each girl and boy.”
