I liked Bagge's other biography comics, so I bought this one too. Here is a woman I never heard of before, but apparently I kind of know who her mother was. What interested me more than Lane's writing was she was one of the woman credited for helping form the Libertarian philosophy. She was more of an anarchist, but she liked some government. It was interesting to see Bagge connect her with Margaret Sanger and Zora Neale Hurston. I hope he does more of these. ( )

Credo is a graphic biography of Rose Wilder Lane, the daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder who wrote the Little House on the Prairie books. I was not aware, though, the she wrote these books with her daughter making huge edits. The books were mainly written by Lane but the stories came from Wilder.

Lane was an accomplished twentieth century writer, feminist, war correspondent and one of the founders of the U. S. Libertarian Party. She was anti-government and anti-marriage and refused to believe that gender should hold anyone back from their goals. Lane was one of the highest paid female writers in America and traveled all over the world in search of stories. She even traveled to Korea and Vietnam to cover those wars for the newspapers that she wrote for. However, despite all of her accomplishments she is known as the daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder.

I thoroughly enjoyed the book and read it twice in succession. It is amazing to me that she was friends with Herbert Hoover, writer Dorothy Johnson and Johnson's husband Sinclair Lewis. She was lucky in her career, raising the glass ceiling for women in succeeding generations. Her credo was an article she wrote concerning her political opinions. It was marketed as her credo, hence the name of the book.

Credo is a great history lesson. ( )

Peter Bagge regresa con una biografía de otra fascinante pionera del siglo XX: la escritora, feminista, corresponsal de guerra y libertaria Rose Wilder Lane. Siguiendo la estela de La mujer rebelde y Fire!!, Credo es un acercamiento vertiginoso y fascinante a la brillante Lane, fundadora del movimiento libertario estadounidense, una de las escritoras mejor pagadas de su tiempo, y con toda probabilidad coautora junto a su madre, Laura Ingalls Wilder, del clásico La casa de la pradera. Al igual que Sanger y Hurston, Lane fue una defensora de los derechos de las mujeres que predicaba con el ejemplo, desafiando todas las normas en su vida personal y profesional, convirtiéndose en una celebridad política y literaria. Credo es una inmersión profundamente documentada en una figura histórica cuyas contribuciones a la sociedad actual saltan a la vista, desde los libros que leemos hasta la política que debatimos.

Prior to marrying, my main exposure to Laura Ingalls Wilder was through the TV show. At my wife's urging, I actually read all the Little House books and made a pilgrimage with her to the Ingalls' home sites in Wisconsin, Minnesota and South Dakota in the mid-90s.

We also read most of the spin-off series written by others about Laura's grandmother, mother and daughter. The Rose books were my least favorite of those, and added to some other nonfiction I read about Laura and some samplings of Rose's writing, I ended up with a pretty negative attitude toward Rose Wilder Lane.

This book does little to improve my opinion of her -- I still find her annoying as hell -- but at least I can appreciate that she was a more complex person than I previously thought.

Bagge's biography is not rigorous history. He skips around through her life and dramatizes the moments from Rose's life he finds most interesting, often going for a humorous angle. He is obviously on Team Rose, heaping lots of scorn on Laura whenever he has a chance.

My wife is on Team Laura (or a "bonnethead" as I found out from Bagge), so I took a great deal of pleasure teasing her with the "facts" Bagge puts forth in his book. She insists that anyone interested in fully understanding the collaboration between Laura and Rose on the Little House books needs to read [book:Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography|22212838], a book which is missing from Bagge's bibliography.

Anyhow, I found this work enjoyable enough that it makes me want to read some more books about and by Laura Ingalls Wilder and Rose Wilder Lane when I have a chance. ( )