Horsebook Riding: Weekly Roundup
Helen Kay’s A Pony for the Winter tells the tale of a pony who gives rides at an amusement park boarded to a young girl for the winter. Deborah, who’s 8 years old, learns the ropes of pony care and wrestles with the moral choice of whether to hide the pony from its owner when he returns in the spring. It’s not a picture book; text outweighs pictures. But there are still plenty of illustrations, and though the reading level is perhaps 3rd grade, younger children can read it with no problems.
Cowardly Clyde has been a real favorite this week. Clyde, a “cowardly” horse belonging to a bravado-filled knight, ends up saving the day (and the knight) from a rampaging ogre. When I came back from my morning walk yesterday, both girls were lying on their stomachs in my 7-year-old’s bed, reading and discussing, admiring Clyde, pointing out their favorite features of the pictures, dreaming what they would do in such a situation: “I’d bite him in the tail, then run around and around till he got dizzy and fell down!” was the best solution I heard.
The Mare on the Hill is a beautifully illustrated book about a white mare who fears people (kind of like Ginger in Black Beauty) who eventually comes to trust the young boys who long to befriend her. The text and paintings are by Thomas Locker, an acclaimed Hudson River painter. Gorgeous book.
Leah’s Pony is about a young girl living in the Dust Bowl during the great Depression. Her family’s farm is about to be auctioned off “the year the corn grew no higher than a man’s thumb,” and Leah makes a decision to sell her pony so she can bid on her father’s truck. (I’m tearing up just writing about it, actually.) It’s a wonderful story that inspires young children with a vision of the power their choices can have. (Good site here.)
Last but not least, Robert the Rose Horse… I’m very tired of this book, but my girls never seem to weary of it. We’ve checked it out of the library several times now. My older daughter read it through earlier in the year, and it was one of the first books she was curious enough about to push through as an early reader. It’s about a horse with an allergy to roses whose itchy nose ends up saving the day during a bank robbery. He’s a lovable equine, albeit one who walks around on his hind legs at will….
