Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

The 5- and 9-volumes sets are very different in quality of design and construction. My photos show the 5-volume set on the left and the 9-volumes set on the right (or the 5-volumes set above and the 9-volumes set below). DIFFERENCES • The 5-volumes set includes only the first five books in the Little House series. The 9-volumes set includes all nine of the books commonly considered the entire Little House series. • The pages of the 5-volumes set is quality, glossy paper. Smooth and bright white. The 9-volumes set is mass-market paperback. You know, kinda grayish and soft-textured pages. • The 5-volumes illustrations are colorized. The 9-volumes are black-and-white. • The 5-volumes set has a solid, cardboard slipcase. The 9-volumes set has flimsy cardstock. • The 5 volumes do NOT include a Little House family tree. The 9 volumes DO include the family tree. • The 5-volumes set is numbered on the spines. The 9-volumes set is not. Plus there are just lots of different details in quality. Page margins are smaller in the 9-volumes. The 9-volumes includes a couple additional pages of Little House advertising. Author and illustrator bios get their own page in the 5-volumes, whereas they are printed on the inside of the back cover of the 9-volumes. Some layout choices are more elegant in the 5-volumes than in the 9-volumes, as of the Little House books listing for example. Each of the 5-volumes books is a little thicker than its counterpart in the 9-volumes set, owing to better quality paper pages in the 5-volumes. THINGS THAT ARE THE SAME • The texts are the same. • The illustrations, by Garth Williams, are the same (though color in the 5-volumes and black-and-white in the 9-volumes). • The typesetting is the same. (Don't be fooled by the text in say, Little House in the Big Woods [Book 1, included in both sets], being much bigger than the text in, say, Little Town on the Prairie [Book 7, only included in the 9-volumes]. If you compare apples to apples, Book 1 in each set, the typesetting is the same.) Hope this helps! Happy Little Housing!