I’m the mom of a nine-year-old hunter/jumper rider who is just a bit ahead of your friend’s niece. My daughter is currently reading the “Horse Life” book listed above and really liking it. Her absolute favorite, though, is the fiction series published by The Plaid Horse, called Show Strides. She’s read all the books in the series several times and just loves them. The Thoroughbred series was also a hit, as was the Horse Girl book mentioned above. Oh, and she’s a big fan of young rider magazine.
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Thanks for sharing this (not OP just the person who kinda unintentionally hijacked the thread, haha) and also I’m going to note it also looks like we’ve got books generally covered once these kids are in their teens or hit adulthood. 
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I read “The Bible”, as eq folks used to call it, at maybe 15? Honestly, the only thing I remember from it was the comment about soft-riding boys being naturally the best horsemen. It’s a little disheartening to think of all of the young girls who read this book.
For the OP, I’m going to second Happy Horsemanship!
Also, thanks for the trip down Memory Lane. I enjoyed many of this books as a child.
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I remember that comment, too! Something about the fact that girls were more naturally timid or less athletic around horses, which is funny, given all the tough-ass women Morris coached.
But it saddened me, because I wasn’t terribly athletic or brave as a child, so I couldn’t prove him wrong. Fortunately, many other women did!
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I don’t remember that - but then I did have the third edition so maybe that comment had been removed, depending on which edition you’d read. And I was an adult in my 20s when I read it so maybe less sensitive/attuned to that sort of thing by then.
And Morris only had how much influence over the hunter/jumpers for how long? And heck even eventing to a degree, he’d work w/the top eventers on their show jumping, you’d occasionally see an eventer who’d send in a XC photo to his column (and often end up criticized for wearing bright colors. Like dude - eventers wear bright colors, you’ve seen this how many times, by 2012, '13, '14, '15 whatever you should KNOW they DO THIS and just give up on saying you don’t like it 
the eventers do not care that you don’t like their XC colors and you are not gonna change that aspect of the sport.)
It seemed really weird to me when I finally got around to reading Tik Maynard’s “In The Middle of the Horsemen” which was written maybe what, I wanna say between about 2014-2016 and there are a few points where he talks about Morris as this almost godlike figure in show jumping. The rest of the book was good but you read some of that knowing what’s come out since the book was written and you’re just like…I can’t even think of a word that’s right, so I’ll just post the cringe emoji: 
It’s just - and again, I was a horse person on the internet in the early 2010s, in hindsight it was wild how meme’d the man was and all that. Like, we really put this guy on this godlike pedestal? Breyer really made a talking action figure? I mean, obviously a lot of folks didn’t know, myself included, and a lot of it was just all in good fun and dumb jokes, but yeah this seems like an excellent cautionary tale for a sport to not almost collectively idolize a singular figure.
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This randomly bubbled back into my mind - so a few years back I was digging through the Sports Illustrated online archives (called the vault and doesn’t need a subscription to access) for some other horse-related article hunt entirely and came across some little story from the late 1950s, if you could call it that, basically just this hot topic type thing where this reporter (not that Alice Higgins, some dude whose name is escaping me and he looked like kind of grungy in the little illustration they had of him that accompanied the column is about all I remember.) went around and asked various muckety-mucks at the National Horse Show that year in the 1950s about womens’ ability to ride at the top of the sport and be competitive (it wasn’t exactly that but it was the gist of the question).
I can’t remember all the names now, but these were like, major muckety-mucks, if they weren’t all riders at the time, they were like, organizers for some of the biggest shows, owners of some of the top horses, etc. And dang near all the men and even one or two of the women (of the few even asked) had some flamingly sexist sounding answers (like, not “women need to stay in the kitchen” bad but really patronizing sounding). But - one of the men this reporter apparently asked (I’m assuming since it’s in the short story - and I used to have this stashed on my computer as kind of an interesting, “yeaaah this is what a few relatively high-profile folks thought of women in the horse world back when, look how times have changed” thing) was Steinkraus who refreshingly, after reading most of the other answers (I wasn’t actively looking for this article-thingy I happened across it trying to get to a different page entirely in some issue’s “original layout”) was one of the very few, possibly almost the only one but I don’t remember everything in this little column/article did not have a horrifically sexist answer (I can’t remember what was written at this point and lost the screenshot of that old thing a while back, if I even still had it on hand this year it would’ve died with my old laptop’s fried hard drive and it might’ve died with my old laptop’s first fried hard drive).
But man was that an example of just how far the sport has come.
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Just want to second this recommendation.
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I mean, Jane Dillon’s great book.
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I have a slightly different perspective.
I rode at a really fancy A show hunter barn in NJ in the 70s. I saw Frank Chapot and GM at the ingate at the barn’s winter schooling show series, and there were some kids who rode with me then who went on to long, successful careers as pros.
Even back then, there were snickers and gossip about George “liking them young” and in particular, nastier stuff about hoping a talented young male rider wouldn’t go ride with George.
In the late 70s, I moved to VA, and somewhere in that time frame, Conrad Holmfeld left Frances Rowe’s and went to Hunterdon to work for George and I won’t even repeat the snickers and jokes that event prompted.
That George was a predator WAS NOT NEWS. That it was being acknowledged openly was.
To be clear: I was the smurfiest of smurfs as a junior. I was the kid in a funny looking tweed coat who leased a school horse to show. And when I moved to VA, I was a kid who mucked stalls and clipped horses in order to ride. I was NOT in the know, I was not hanging at the cool kids table. It was common knowledge.
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I’m not surprised by there having been rumors at all - I’ve seen a lot of that brought up as it all came out, but I wasn’t paying attention to English riding until basically 2010-11 (I rode as a kid but it was western at a veerrrrrry backyard barn and backyard is not a compliment here). By the time I was on the scene riding English, in the Midwest at either the aforementioned backyard barn or later at a small but really nice eventing barn run by an adult ammie, most of what was around in the general horsey culture (not so much in the barns I was at but moreso in the magazines, books, websites, etc.) about Morris was this portrayal of this almost godlike being in the hunter/jumper world, kind of in a half-joking manner, but also in a half-not-joking manner. I want to say it was the Canada-based blog Horse Junkies United that had gained a bit of a following and sort of started the snarky George Morris memes rolling and then some of the other blog/websites jumped in and it kind of rolled from there in the general horse culture. My main involvement in horses was reading about them, volunteering at shows, taking lessons while trying to work towards competing and then finding myself horseless and barnless which is about where I’ve been since.
I wasn’t necessarily shocked especially after reading his autobiography (somehow made it through the whole thing but it took me at least 3 months), and I wasn’t one who necessarily put the man on the pedestal some did, I respected, prior to the whoooole thing coming out, his general knowledge and his columns in Practical Horseman and maybe laughed at some of the memes and that would’ve been about it. Otherwise I was a lot like you, generally not in the know and mostly a nobody.
I’m wondering how far-reaching those whispers, snickers and rumors were? Seems it was almost regional/generational. Again, reading Tik Maynard’s book, for instance (I half hope a revised edition eventually comes out that omits most of the mentions of Morris - Maynard never trained with Morris but mentions him several times in the book with quite a bit of respect and for me at least, it put a damper on what was otherwise an interesting book - like, yeah the book was published before all…(picture someone gesturing vaguely at a pile of articles about the SafeSport sanctions) this came out in terms of actual consequences for the dirtbag, but, still reading it a few years after it all went down, all the respectful-almost-reverential mentions of Morris just sort of ruined the otherwise good book because you’re reading it and hit a mention of how legendary Morris is and you’re just thinking, “uh…he’s a pedo, this is documented now, he’s been sanctioned, etc. etc.”)
Common knowledge doesn’t seem to reach everywhere.
I feel like the whole problem with the horse world’s reaction to Morris is that they collectively put him on a pedestal which he very much did not deserve to be on, and frankly no person, good, bad or neutral, should be placed on a pedestal but putting people on pedestals seems to be part of human nature broadly so I don’t know that I have the answers for that as I get all philosophical here. 
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Wanted to keep this on topic more and second the mentions of Cherry Hill - I don’t know how compelling they’d be for a 9 YO specifically but a 12-14 YO might find value in some of her works (they’re generally well-illustrated IIRC but the actual reading, while fairly simple and straightforward, might be a bit boring to the younger ages). I had a few of her books in my teens, still have the one she co-wrote with her husband on hoof care (gave the others to Goodwill or a used bookstore possibly, as I’d outgrown them) but the two I had were very western-oriented (How to Think Like a Horse and I can’t remember the title to the other one now). Still good general-purpose books but not H/J specific, I don’t think (though it’s possible she’s written one that is H/J specific).
I think Cherry Hill’s books are excellent, seconding the suggestion, and totally appropriate and readable for age 9! Also, they’re more up-to-date than some of our nostalgia reads.
I rode at a hunter barn in 2014. Yes, there were jokes about Morris. But–to be perfectly honest, they were more about his sexuality than the age of the men he liked–and I think to some extent, that was a screen for him for many years. One would always wonder if unkind things were homophobia, versus referring to the actual age of the men he was with. I knew Morris had a non-riding boyfriend in his 20s, but that’s a very different kettle of fish than abusing one’s power with an underage male working student.
I totally agree that there were many things joked about with Morris, like the fact he put thumbtacks on a rider’s saddle to stop her from using her seat and his cruel remarks, that were tolerated far too long–as in, not until very recently, and I put up with a lot of shit from riding instructors I never would have in other contexts, because I thought that was how it had to be. To be fair, I also did from acting and writing instructors, just because, you know, the arts is another profession, where, like riding, it’s assumed it’s a privilege to pay to have your efforts insulted and part of paying your dues!
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Thanks for seconding the Cherry Hill books - I only had the three and two of those were more western-oriented to begin with so I’m by no means familiar with her whole catalog.
I think you’re spot on re. the jokes about Morris and yeah, by the time I remember reading like, anything (again I wasn’t around people who cracked jokes about that end of it, and a lot of the stuff I’d see online was more re. the thumbtacks on the saddle, etc. this was maybe a comment on social media somewhere) it was, as you said, Morris and some guy in his 20s which, yes, still not necessarily right depending on one’s personal morals but not resoundingly “this is wrong/illegal.”
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