I ended up googling everything in this book. Dugout house? How does that work? What about bugs? Moisture? I ended up with a picture of a hobbit house with a michigan basement interior in my head. I'm certain I wouldn't want to live in one. 
 For that matter, I don't think I realized that Minnesota was prairie. So then I ended up looking at wilderness photos of prairies and 1870's prairie houses. And clothes. Pa's bear coat at the end...wtf was that? How could a little fur muff and cloak possibly be warm enough for a northern winter? 
 Then the grasshoppers. That whole part of the book is chilling. Of course it led to me reading lengthy studies about the locusts swarms of 1874 and 1875. Soooo creepy and yucky. Laura's descriptions of the sound of their eating and the way they got into absolutely everything, it made my skin crawl. 
 My other thoughts on this book are about Pa. He seems like a very nice man who loves his family, but my god does he make some bad choices. Most of the trouble they have in this book is his fault. No, he didn't bring swarms of locusts...but he puts them into debt leading up to the grasshoppers. He didn't know squat about the area or the weather or anything, but he made the rash choices to spend money they didn't have. Repeatedly. 
 And that last bit, with the snowstorm. That's the second time he was caught in town during a storm. He didn't NEED to go that day and Ma didn't want him to. He knew how fast storms came up in that area and he also chose to not stay in town like he promised he would. What would they have done if he HAD died in that blizzard? The whole thing was crazy and irresponsible. 
 This was a good book. It made me curious about lots of things. I love google. :)