Everyone has their own unique relationship to Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie. There are people who think the book series is a stone cold classic celebrating the intrepid American spirit and others who think it’s full of ignorant bigotry, mostly flung in the direction of the indigenous people that pioneers like the Ingalls so blithely displaced. For legions of Gen Xers brought up on the classic show, the story is synonymous with the warmth of Michael Landon’s Pa and far less complicated days.

As for me, I fell deeply in love with Ingalls Wilder’s novels as a grade-schooler juggling day-to-day schoolyard drama with the sudden death of my beloved father and our family’s instant plunge into poverty. For a time, the Laura I met on the pages of my dog-eared paperbacks was maybe the only other little girl I knew who understood what it was like to face life and death drama on a daily basis. Her stories made me feel less alone. If Laura could survive, then I could, too.

All of this is to say, when people tune into Netflix‘s brand new adaptation of Little House on the Prairie, they’re going to be bringing their whole covered wagons full of baggage about the project with them. I’ve already seen commentators on the far-right complain that it’s too woke and critics on the left complain it’s too gentle to the Ingalls’s cause. As for me, a woman who remembers those novels as a lifeline during a traumatic time, I thought Netflix’s new Little House on the Prairie perfectly captured the series’s imperfect legacy. It’s an absolutely charming family drama that will either hook you with its tender heart or infuriate you for not being “your” Little House.

Created by Rebecca Sonnenshine, Netflix’s Little House on the Prairie skips past most of the events of Little House in the Big Woods* to follow little Laura Ingalls (Alice Halsey) as her family travels to a new homestead in Kansas. If Laura sees their treacherous journey fording rivers and making camp amongst the open elements as a great adventure, then her more prim older sister Mary (Skywalker Hughes) wishes they were still safe in their home town. Even though “Ma” (Crosby Fitzgerald) and “Pa” (Luke Bracey) put on a brave face for their girls, it’s clear that Caroline shares a mind with Mary, while Charles is embracing this new chapter as a way to run away from the mistakes of his past.

Australian actor Luke Bracey has made a career for himself playing rugged heartthrobs on screen. Here, though, he maintains a delicate balance between being the perfect Pa that Laura idolizes and the imperfect man his wife Caroline loves. Alice Halsey, for her part, plays Laura as an earnest, precocious, and incredibly courageous young heroine. Girls (and boys) are going to want to be just like her and grown ups will be as charmed by her as Warren Christie’s Mr. Edwards quickly is.

My favorite thing about Netflix’s Little House on the Prairie is how gosh darn gorgeous its scenery is. Episode 1 director Sarah Adina Smith (A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, Lessons In Chemistry) turns the flat landscape and sprawling sky into a vast canvas that only highlights how small, and exposed, the Ingalls family are compared to their dreams of building a future on their own terms. The natural light gives everything an amber-tinted haze, like a faded photograph or a favorite memory gilt with nostalgia.

If the visual language of Little House on the Prairie captures author Laura Ingalls Wilder’s rose-colored view of the events of her childhood, then the show’s approach to adapting the books fills some of the gaps between fact and fiction. The idea that the Ingalls are actually illegally living on Osage land comes as a stark surprise towards the end of Ingalls Wilder’s novel; in this version, Charles Ingalls discovers this much earlier, to his earnest horror. It fuels a key source of tension throughout the season. Even if Laura looks at her indigenous neighbors with genuine kindness and curiosity, her family — and the rest of the mostly white settlers — are clued into the legal, moral, and existential quandary that their fledgling town of Independence’s very existence provokes. Do any of these pioneers really deserve to be there? And what are they willing to do to stay?

For some, the sheer acknowledgement of this bitter historic reality will feel blasphemous to their sacred memories of the books, and for others, it will feel like the show is trying to brush over the novels’ more hideous moments without honestly interrogating them. Again, what you make of Netflix’s Little House on the Prairie will largely depend on what you bring to it. When I read the books, I clung to Laura’s emotional journey, first and foremost. I marveled at Ingalls Wilder’s descriptions of life on the prairie — the enchanting wildlife, vast vistas, and quirky characters — while recognizing that her worldview was that of a child on the frontlines of a fraught moment in United States history. Netflix’s adaption captures the sheer wonder I felt reading these books, but refracts it through a modern lens.

Little House on the Prairie is an addictive family drama full of stunning visuals, sweet storylines, and a vivid sense of realism. It’s also a loving adaptation of books that mean a lot — good, bad, and in between — to people. Netflix’s Little House might not feel like your Little House, but it sure felt an awful lot like Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House to me.

Little House on the Prairie is now streaming on Netflix.

*Don’t worry, hard core book fans, the show doesn’t forget the existence of baby Carrie or even the brilliant stories from Big Woods! Sonnenshine simply uses memories of the “house in the big woods” to explain the family’s move as well as their individual hopes, dreams, regrets, and apprehensions.