Review Detail

Upside Down in a Laura Ingalls Town

Young Adult Indie 146

Frontier House in novel form

November 04, 2016 (Updated: June 06, 2026)

Overall rating

3.7

Writing Style

4.0

Plot

3.0

Characters

4.0

Illustrations/Photos (if applicable)

N/A

Brooke Decker's family is dealing with her mother's death from cancer very poorly-- she's running around drinking and getting into trouble, her younger sister has adopted needy, babyish ways, and their father is generally falling apart. He signs the family up to participate in a reality show because he feels it might save them all... and also because, unbeknownst to the girls, he has lost his job. Brooke doesn't want to give up her hair products and technology to live in a Little House on the Prairie inspired setting, but sees that her father is really concerned about her and reluctantly agrees. The situation is even worse than Brooke imagined, and she has a hard time cooking as well as getting along with snotty rich neighbor, Prudence, who doesn't share her hardships. On the bright side, the family is able to make the best of the situation, even when the crops fall on hard times, and Brooke finds a young man with whom she can "keep company". When things take a desperate turn for the worse, will the family be able to remain on the television show?

Good Points

Clearly, Tall Manning is a big fan of Little House, and has researched living situations at that time very well. Everything from clothing to food preparation to bedding and household furnishings is fully covered, and Brooke's distaste of the old fashioned versions made evident. There's even a country store, and plenty of livestock to add to the verisimilitude of the Decker family's accommodations.

There are some nice twists at the end with Prudence and Wendell, but I won't give them away. There would have been a lot of social dichotomy at the time, and while the original Wilder books touch on it with Nellie Olsen, I appreciated how much more in depth this was when describing the differences in living circumstances. That one family even had slaves was different.

While the story of a family participating on a reality show has been told, this had some good detail. I would have liked it more if Brooke had not hated the situation, but it would be a rare teenager who enjoyed being dragged away form her regular life for three or four months.

Hand this to older readers familiar with Ingalls' work or those who loved Bell's Little Blog on the Prairie or Whittemore's Colonial Madness. Better yet, use it to threaten an obstinate teen that the privations of life in the 1860s could easily be replicated at home if behaviors don't improve!