History lovers can enter a pie baking contest, hear stories about frontier living and listen to bluegrass and folk music in a local festival focused on pioneer days.
Nearly 90 years after the first book was published, the multi-book tales of the “Little House on The Prairie” series, detailing a scrappy pioneer girl growing up and getting married on the prairie, are still extremely popular with families at all the Johnson County Public Library locations, said Sarah Taylor, programming manager for the Johnson County Public Library.
Local librarians wanted to capitalize on the popularity of the series written by Laura Ingalls Wilder by throwing a festival that will have families thinking of all things pioneer. The Little Library on the Prairie Festival is 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday at the Trafalgar library, 424 S. Tower St.
“We see this book still being so popular with the children and families visiting our libraries,” Taylor said.Â
The series is based on the life of Wilder, with books that follow her from the Big Woods in Wisconsin as a young child to her first four years of marriage in South Dakota.
Readers are likely still fascinated by the series because of the details of what daily life was like for pioneers and what they had to do to survive each day, Taylor said.
“Just to live was sometimes an adventure,” she said.
One aspect of the festival is showing families exactly what day to day pioneer life would have been like.
Children can see a slate board that Wilder would have used for her school work as a child. They will also see how laundry was done and how rugs were cleaned in the pioneer days, Taylor said.
Pioneer games and crafts help round out the day of activities. A storyteller will be at the festival to detail the frontier the Ingalls family may have faced, along with a Conner Prairie interpreter. Photos are available with a Wilder impersonator and bands with music ranging from bluegrass to folk songs will play most of the day. Bakers can register a pie in the pie baking contest at pageafterpage.org
Two grants from Festival Country Indiana and Indiana Humanities helped the library get the festival running.
The hope is to make the festival an annual event that will attract regional audiences, Taylor said.
“We are trying to grow this into a regional, historic festival,” she said.
