Something I realized for the first time in all the times I've read this - As many times as Pa kept talking about how the wheat crop was going to pay for everything, you just know that something is going to happen to the wheat. Just goes to show, don't count your chickens. Or your wheat crop.

Anyway, this one was kind of intense. The conflict in the last book was all human-caused (government land vs. Native American land), but this one had problems that were all caused by nature. Grasshoppers, blizzards, rising creeks - none of that is particularly fun. As much as the Little House books have a reputation for being sweet, comfortable reads, some scary things actually happened to the Ingalls family. The illustration of Laura in the rushing creek and holding on to the plank and almost getting carried off by the water - that has always freaked me out, even just a little bit.