First released in 1986, one of the original Historical Characters, Kirsten represented the days of pioneers on the frontier. Set in 1854, Kirsten Larson and her family immigrate to America from Sweden to start a better life, moving with Kristen’s uncle and his wife and stepdaughters. The stories focus first on Kirsten’s struggle to adapt to her new surroundings, then on her family’s survival.
- Meet Kirsten: Kirsten and her family arrive on American shores and start the long, tiring journey towards her uncle’s farm.
- Kirsten Learns a Lesson: Kirsten starts school on the frontier but struggles to adjust to her new language and rules, and she finds escape with a new friend in the woods.
- Kirsten’s Surprise: Kirsten goes with her father to retrieve the things they had to leave behind for the rest of the journey, and brings St. Lucia’s Day to the frontier.
- Happy Birthday, Kirsten!: After Mama has a new baby, Kirsten must work harder and miss school to help care for both of them, but she is rewarded later with a special celebration.
- Kirsten Saves The Day: Kirsten and her brother Peter gather honeycombs to use for trading, but their treasure attracts unwanted guests.
- Changes for Kirsten: Tragedy strikes when the family home burns down in the middle of winter, leaving the Larsons homeless. Things seem hopeless until Kirsten and her brothers make an astonishing discovery.
The series includes the following tropes:
- Bears Are Bad News: Kirsten and Peter have to face black bears when they try to collect honey from a wild beehive in Kirsten Saves The Day.
- Big Brother Mentor: Kirsten’s brother Lars is this, especially in Changes for Kirsten.
- Braving the Blizzard: In Kirsten's Surprise, Kirsten and her papa get lost in a blizzard when driving home from the nearby town.
- The same thing happens in Changes for Kirsten when she and Lars get lost in the snow trying to collect fur pelts. In this case, they end up sharing a cave overnight with the body of a more experienced trapper who froze to death in the cave.
- Darker and Edgier: The pioneer life in the 1800s is not all picnics and swims in the river. Deaths of children are discussed, and in one of the mini-books, a little boy is orphaned, describing how he saw his own mother be crushed under a boulder and slowly die.
- Death of a Child:
- Kirsten’s best friend from Sweden, Marta, who is the same age of nine, dies from cholera in the middle of the journey to the frontier.
- One of Kirsten’s schoolmates tells a story of her Aunt Sadie, who died after giving birth to twins, only one of whom survived the process.
- Death by Childbirth: Kirsten is afraid of losing her mother this way when one of her schoolmates tells her that her own aunt died giving birth. Luckily, her mother survives the birth and her sister is fine.
- Deliberate Values Dissonance: Most of Kirsten's family, friends and neighbors consider the Indians to be savage and wild, so Kirsten has to keep her friendship with Singing Bird a secret.
- Dying Alone: In Changes for Kirsten, when setting out animal traps during the winter, Kirsten and Lars enter the cave home of a fur trapper named Old Jack and discover that he has died in his sleep from the cold. Since he has no family and no one to bury him, they pile stones against his door so animals can't get in, so they can come back and give him a proper burial in the spring, when the ground has thawed.
- Gender-Equal Ensemble: After Britta is born, the Larson family has two sons, Peter and Lars, and two daughters, Britta and Kirsten.
- Good Stepfather: It’s only mentioned once in the first book but Uncle Olav is Anna and Lisbeth’s stepfather. He still treats them as though they were his own daughters and they even have his surname.
- An Immigrant's Tale: Kirsten and her family sail from their home in Sweden to start a new life on the American frontier. Half of the official series explores Kirsten’s homesickness and struggle to feel at home in her new country.
- In-Series Nickname: Kirsten's Indian friend, Singing Bird, calls her "Yellow Hair."
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: In Changes for Kirsten, when out fur trapping with Lars, Kirsten finds an injured baby raccoon and brings it home. Peter, wanting to play with the raccoon, takes it out of its box and puts it on the floor. It starts to run around, and in the chaos it knocks over an oil lamp, causing a fire that burns down the Larsons' cabin and destroys almost everything they own.
- Put on a Bus: At the end of Kirsten Learns a Lesson, Singing Bird and her tribe leave the area because the deer are gone and they have to travel elsewhere to find food. She returns in the short story Kirsten on the Trail.
- Repetitive Name: Kirsten's older brother is named Lars Larson.
- Replacement Goldfish: Since Kirsten's doll Sari is in the family's trunk and far away for the first half of the series, Kirsten makes a sock doll from an old stocking stuffed with milkweed floss and calls it Little Sari, until she and her father get the trunks in Kirsten’s Surprise.
- Stern Teacher: Miss Winston. She’s strict and blunt, but she cares for her students and helps Kirsten out with her struggles in learning English.
- Toy-Based Characterization: When Kirsten's family has to store their things in a warehouse for a few months, one of the things that has to be put away is her doll Sari. When Kirsten misses Sari, she creates a makeshift doll from an old stocking filled with milkweed floss and calls it Little Sari. Besides the dolls, Kirsten and her cousins also have toys made from things in nature, like doll cakes made from dried mud and doll beds made from woven twigs.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: At the end of Happy Birthday, Kirsten!, Kirsten adopts a kitten that Missy the barn cat abandoned, intending to hand-raise it. However, it never appears in further books.
- Young and in Charge: Kirsten's teacher Miss Winston is nineteen. In fact, she's the same age as Amos, one of her students, but she makes her authority clear on the first day of school.
