Customer Reviews

The Far Side of the Loch (Martha Years)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Martha Morse is a lively lass, too lively to be laird's daughter. Her Mother, Grisie, and herself wait for Father to come, with a enchanting secret they can't wait to find out! Her relatives are moving to Fairlie, and Martha is bursting with excitement. Cousin Mary and Rachel, the youngest of the cousins, comes to stay with Martha and Nannie and Mollie and Cook and Father, while their home in Fairlie is remodeled. If you are a Martha fan or you liked Little House in the Highlands, you will most definitely like the second book in the Martha Years, The Far Side of the loch.

This is a great story of a young Scottish lass in the hills of Scotland who has many adventures while growing up. Some the Scottish brogue is hard to understand at times but if you work with it you get the hang of it. I love this book, along with all the other books about Laura Ingalls Wilder, her ancestors, and descendents. I never want the books to end! Great job Ms. Wiley!

I loved this book, as I did all of the books in all the LittleHouse series. It's about Martha who has wonderful adventures, fromgetting a hedgehog, to waulking wool, pondering her nannys falling in love, and getting into trouble in the middle of the night. It's a winner!

The Far Side of the Loch is a magnificent and well-written sequel to Little House in the Highlands. I love the new adventures of Martha: from getting a new hedgehog to preparing for a new arrival: but that's a secret! All in all, The Far Side of the Loch is a wonderful book, and I hope that you make the right decision in reading this book. Och, ye'll be sorry if ye don't!

Warning - you will enjoy this book, and the series will not be finished according to the author herself. Why? Here's what she had to say on her website.

"The Time Has Come, the Walrus Said...
...to talk about Little House. Many of you have written to ask when my next Martha or Charlotte book will be published. Plans have been in flux for over a year now, but it's time to address your questions.
As I mentioned here recently, HarperCollins has launched new paperback editions of Laura's books which feature photographic covers and no longer contain the Garth Williams illustrations. (The Garth Williams art will remain in the hardcover editions and the colorized paperback editions.)
There are also going to be some changes in the other Little House series. The Martha, Charlotte, Caroline, and Rose books are being reissued in abridged editions. If you wish to read these books in their original, complete forms, you'll want to pick them up now before the unabridged editions go out of print. In at least one case ( On Top of Concord Hill, a Caroline book), the original is already out of print and is hard to find. (A reader recently told me copies are selling for hundreds of dollars on eBay.)
The abridged editions of my books and the Caroline and Rose books will be released with new covers this summer. They are significantly shorter; in some cases more than a hundred pages have been cut from the original edition.
In light of these changes, I have decided not to continue writing Martha and Charlotte books. Although it is indeed strange to know that I will not tell the rest of their stories (especially the story of Martha and Lew's romance, for which I have been sowing seeds since the first books), I do not think it is such a bad thing to end my part of the story with Beyond the Heather Hills and Across the Puddingstone Dam. In both of those books, I had the opportunity to say something about what is good and true and enduring in this world. Martha glimpsed it, looking into the eyes of her infant niece. Charlotte glimpsed it in the eyes of her mother, the grown-up Martha, who endured the worst kind of loss but, through faith, managed to keep hold of--and share--her joy.
It will be difficult to say goodbye to these girls who have been to me like my own children. I have loved watching them grow. I am deeply honored to have had the opportunity to, in the words of Gail Godwin, "respectfully imagine" them and chronicle their stories.
As I said, my decision to leave the series has been in the works for quite some time. Meanwhile, I've been working on new projects and am quite excited about my current novel, which is about neither a Scottish lass nor a New England villager, but something completely different. Stay tuned...

You Guys Are Great
Thank you so much for the outpouring of support and well wishes you have given in the comments from yesterday's post. You all are wonderful, and it's a blessing to have such passionate readers!
Some questions naturally arose in the comments, and I thought I'd tackle a few of them here. One important point is that HarperCollins doesn't think of the abridgements as dumbed-down. I do, and that I am strongly opposed to the dumbing-down of children's literature must be obvious from my decision to walk away from a series of books that has been my heart's work for the past decade. Although I came to the decision many months ago, the shock of it still takes my breath away sometimes. I love Martha and Charlotte, really love them. Like daughters. I have written certain scenes between Martha and Lew in my mind a hundred times. I'm sorry that I will not be sharing them with you, more sorry than I can express.
My decision to quit also had serious ramifications for my family. Had I continued with the series, we would still be living in Virginia; Scott would still be a work-at-home freelancer. So quitting was not a decision I made lightly; it had teeth.
And yet, if you read this blog then you know my stance on giving children the highest caliber of literature--not a slimmed-down version of what had been a carefully crafted novel. And so, when it became clear that my publishers were committed to their decision to abridge, I made what I believe to be the right decision--the only decision I could have made. Doing the right thing, I tell my children, is almost never the easy thing.
Certainly, this was a very hard thing to do.
But as I said, while I see the abridgement as dumbing-down, I must say in all fairness that I don't believe my publishers see it that way at all. They see this as an opportunity to bring the books to a younger audience, a way to keep the series in print. The decision was presented to me with excitement and enthusiasm; I really think they were surprised that I was dismayed by it.
I bear them no ill will; indeed, I shall be sorry not to be working with my wonderful HarperCollins editor anymore. She is a gem. I simply disagree, quite gravely, with this publishing decision. I do think children deserve the very best books we can give them. The books I wrote, the books that were carefully and lovingly edited by not one, but two top-notch editors (the great Alix Reid, who edited all eight of my novels, not to mention Newbery winner Ella Enchanted, has since left the publishing world for other pursuits), are, I truly believe, literature of high quality. And I don't think they are too hard, or too long, for young readers. I have heard from too many enthusiastic young readers to believe otherwise.
HarperCollins has made a business decision, and I disagree with it on principle, as an author, a reader, and a mother. I think chopping up the books is a mistake. But--and this is very important--publishers respond to trends in the marketplace. They make decisions based upon what sells. If you, as consumers (readers, parents, booklovers), want to influence publishing trends, you must do it (I am sorry to say) with your pocketbooks. The big publishing houses don't read our blogs; they don't know how we feel about literature versus twaddle. They only know what sells.
I see both sides of this coin, because I live on both sides. I'm a homeschooling mom with a modest household income, and frugality is a must. I'm also a writer whose livelihood depends on people spending money on books. Years ago, Scott and I made a conscious decision to strike a balance between these two competing identities: we resolved not to buy used if the book is still in print and the author is still alive. We buy new books in hardcover as often as possible, because that too sends a message to a publisher. And if we read a book at the library and truly love it, we try to buy a copy of it too.
(Now you know why I have cheap furniture and don't dress well. All the discretionary income goes to books.)
So. I'm deeply gratified that you are ordering copies of my unabridged novels while you can still get them. Deeply gratified--yesterday was a goosebumpy day as the comments and emails came pouring in. But if you really want to show your support for the principles on which I stand, go out and buy a new copy of The Penderwicks. In hardcover, if possible! "

Pretty sad. Don't say you weren't warned. You will want to know how MArtha ends up and none of us will ever find out.

This was a great book, as are all books that a linked to LauraIngalls Wilder. I liked reading about all the things Martha did in hertime. It was a good book that continued the story of Laura's great grandmother, Martha.

This edition is severely abridged. Don't waste your time. Get the whole story (which is really no more difficult to read - just longer and better and with all the effort and details the author intended, not a hacked and chopped version she doesn't even like - she left the publisher and stopped writing the series' because of their decision....)

Melissa Wiley really showcases the research she's done with these prequels to the Little House on the Prairie series. The tone is lighthearted, yet poignant, and she truly has a talent for imitating almost exactly the writing style of Laura Ingalls Wilder, which only serves to heighten the reader's sense of authenticity and transport back to the days of 18th century Scotland. A wonderful job, and not a disappointment at all for fans of Wilder.

I cannot get enough of any story related to little house. This is a fun story about Laura Ingall's ancestors and I love it.

The Far Side of the Loch is the second book in the Little House prequels, and also the second to feature Martha Morse, the great-grandmother of Laura Ingalls Wilder.

In this book it seemed to me that Martha was starting to feel some of those familiar pangs that we get from time to time as our families grow and our lives change. Martha's brothers are away at school and even her older sister seems to be changing and becoming more difficult to live with! On the bright side, Martha gets to spend some time with cousins near her own age which is always a childhood treat!

This book had such vivid descriptions of the landscape around Martha's home that it lead us in our homeschool to take out some books from the library on Scotland and to just enjoy some of the beautiful country side. That helped the children to picture some of the beautiful imagery the author, Melissa Wiley, uses in describing the area around The Stone House and the nearby loch, like this one:


"The eastern face of the hill, all grass and gorse bushes, sloped gently down to a stretch of vast, tree-less grassy moor. Its western face was the steep and rocky one, looking out upon Loch Caraid. From its shoulders, Martha could see clear across the valley- the wide lake spread out beneath the misty green mountains opposite the cottages where Father's tenants lived, the flax field, and the peat hags where the tenants cut slabs of peat grass to burn in all the fireplaces of the valley."




As homeschoolers, this was a good starting place for us to learn a bit about Scotland's geography and a bit about it history. The little hedgehog in the book, Hedgie, also sent us learning about those little creatures one day too!

Just as in the first book, The Far Side of the Loch has a wonderful Scottish Fairytale woven into the story line that enthralled my daughter but got the boys' attention as well.

We are eagerly looking forward to reading to continuing with Martha's story in the next book and in learning more about her homeland of Scotland!