As a lifelong Little House fan of the books and then the show, I was thrilled to get an early copy.
I spent a lot of time on YouTube watching clips Butler refers to in getting his acting chops that I was unaware.
It’s a heartfelt book, candid in some areas but opaque in others. There a couple of little bombshells he reveals that cannot even be unearthed when googling him. I like that he is a decent man and humble, which wafts off the pages.
The one critique I have is he tends to wander into his sidebar commentary quite often and he gets a little preachy. He assumes an apologetic stance for stuff that was normal over 40 years ago and judges it through today’s lens. He makes an entire chapter about the kiss on LH and I thought it got beaten into the ground. The age difference between he and Melissa Gilbert may have been uncomfortable but it wasn’t uncommon. He made a comment in the book that those types of relationships weren’t happening in real life. Yes, they were—Woody Allen and Mia Farrow for instance.