A division of the American Library Association voted unanimously Saturday to strip Laura Ingalls Wilder’s name from a major children’s literature award over concerns about how the author referred to Native Americans and blacks.
The Association for Library Service to Children says the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award will now be known as the Children’s Literature Legacy Award.
Wilder, who wrote the Little House book series, was the first recipient of the award, which was established in 1954 and intended to honor books published in the U.S. that have had a big impact on children’s literature.
The Little House series was based on Wilder’s own life and told the story of the Ingalls family as it moved around the Great Plains in the 19th century. While many of the Little House books became widely read, critics said her work included many stereotypical and reductive depictions of Native Americans and people of color.
In 1935’s Little House on the Prairie, for example, Wilder described one setting as a place where “there were no people. Only Indians lived there.” That description was changed in later editions of the book. And multiple characters in the Little House series intone that “the only good Indian is a dead Indian.”