Indians aren’t mentioned in Little House in the Big Woods. There are no wolves in Farmer Boy. There are no stoves in Little House on the Praire. There are no named lakes in On the Banks of Plum Creek. The Bible isn’t mentioned in By the Shores of Silver Lake. The china shepherdess isn’t mentioned in The Long Winter. There are no kettles in Little Town on the Prairie. There is no cornbread in These Happy Golden Years.
Lots of things come and go in the “Little House” series. The wooden bracket is missing in Indian Territory, but reappears at Plum Creek. Then it disappears again during the Hard Winter.
I have been paying a lot of attention to things lately. The most recent has been lamps and lanterns. I don’t know anything (yet!) about the history of lanterns, but in the early books in the series, the lanterns seem to all contain a lighted candle. Later on, there is no mention of candles; the lanterns are merely “lit.” Does this mean that the Ingallses’ candle-holding-tin-lanterns were replaced by light-the-wick-kerosene-lanterns during Laura’s growing-up years?
