Laura Ingalls Wilder
Twenty-five years after they were published, nine of the Little House books written by Mansfield author Laura Ingalls Wilder appeared on the Publishers Weekly list of All-Time Best-Selling Paperback Children's Books--and these are only the HarperCollins versions first reprinted in 1971, with 26,112,962 copies at the time of Wilder's Writers Hall of Fame of America induction.
Laura Ingalls Wilder was born in 1867 in Wisconsin. She became an elementary school teacher, married, and moved to Mansfield, MO, in 1894, where she lived until her death at age 90.
Wilder's first book, The Little House in the Big Woods (1932), was published when she was 65. It began the story of five-year-old Laura and her family in the Wisconsin woods. Her other publications include Farmer Boy (1933), Little House on the Prairie (1935), On the Banks of Plum Creek (1937), and By the Shores of Silver Lake (1939).
Wilder wrote about home and the family primarily to entertain. She was interested in providing her young readers with information on how life was lived by their ancestors. Wilder's books were not about the country's leaders; they were about the country's people.
Between 1960 and 1980, the Wilder Award was given every five years. From 1980 to 2001, it was awarded every three years. Beginning in 2001, it has been awarded every two years.