A whole new world opens up for Rose Wilder when she leaves Rocky Ridge Farm and moves to Louisiana to live with her aunt Eliza Jane. Rose is sixteen now, and she thrives in a city brimming with excitement and adventure. Rose even finds herself becoming an independent young woman with her own ideas, ambitions, and dreams.

After the last couple books feeling like more of the same, this book was refreshingly different. Rose travels to Louisiana to live with her aunt and finish high school. She makes new friends, learns, and starts to grow up.

The downsides of this book were that the politics were (once again) rather invasive and the scenes rather disconnected. I think that these two problems are related. The problem with the politics was not that they were there; it was that they felt like an add on. But then, to some degree, everything in the book felt like an add on. I suspect that, since this book was completed after the author's death, it is more of a raw compilation of the anecdotes the author had heard from Rose than those anecdotes woven into a story like the early books in the series. ( )

love this series!!!! ( )

Honestly this was the most interesting to me of the Rose books. Actually on the whole they improved after someone finished the unfinished manuscripts. It is possible though that this is because the subject matter was more interesting and Rose got to be more of an adult. She really does discover a whole new world out there.

The theme of these books is basically to quote from Beauty and the Beast "I want so much more than they've got planned" and it is obvious that Rose wants to explore the world and see more of what there was than her mother did.

( )

In the seventh volume of Little House: The Rose Years, Rose Wilder spreads her wings and spends a school year with her aunt down in Crowley, Louisiana. Those months serve to expand her social consciousness as she experiences life in a bigger city, with different types of people. On one hand, I missed all of the familiar and lovable characters from the previous books. Part of me mourned as Rose drifted away from her parents' values and lifestyles. But on the other hand, I am a child of the 20th Century. I can relate to many of her feelings. And there's the pure fun of exploring life in Louisiana through Rose's eyes. This one's a volume to check out even if you haven't been following the series.
--J. ( )