Again with the childhood favorites

My little girls are letting me read Laura Ingall's series to them, and it's been such fun. We're in the "House on the Prairie" book now, but they've brought me the "Golden Years" several times asking me to read it because it has some interesting pictures (like Laura pulling the knife out of the pinned braid of her student in her first school).

A lot of stuff is sticking out now that I don't remember--like she was just fifteen when she taught that first school, and three of the students were older than she!---but a lot of it is familiar and loved.

I picked up These Happy Golden Years last night and read it full through by myself. And I cried, a lot, inexplicably. I remember my mother crying over it and being unable to finish reading it aloud to me, but I didn't understand why. I did not cry when I read it on my own at whatever young age I was. But why is it so evocative for me as an adult? Is it just my weird genetic inheritance or does it affect lots of people that way?

Olga