This installment in the wildly popular frontier series by real-life pioneer Wilder was banned from a South Dakota classroom because of comments the characters in the book made about Native Americans.
This children’s classic continues to appear on banned book lists because of Native American objections to its themes and language. It focuses on the hardships endured by the pioneer family and ignores the sufferings of Native Americans. In addition, it contains such expressions as “The only good Indian is a dead Indian.”
A television series of the same name was broadcast from 1974 to 1983. Its characters and plots were adapted from Wilder’s books. The book regained popularity because of the television series; not surprisingly, its resurgence caused renewed complaints. In 1993, for example, Little House on the Prairie was banned in Thibodaux, Louisiana, and in 1994 it made the banned-book list in Sturgis, South Dakota.