Horse books you loved as a kid: Still got ‘em?

I LOVE Trixie Belden! It is horse related in that Honey Wheeler had horses. This year for Christmas, I have bought my 11 year old great niece a copy of the Black Stallion. Turns out is is an old copy, with a plain cover but it still has the original pen and ink illustrations that I love so much. In case she cannot get her cell phone mind around reading an actual book, I am including a copy of the nearly perfect movie as well. I fear this will not be well recieved.

@Larksmom, that wide shot of Alec and The Black coming together is exquisite filmmaking. Sigh.

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King Of The Wind. No, I don’t still have all those old books. But another of my old favourites is the now banned Dr Suess book McGelligot’s Pool (spelling?), which I found to be very inspiring, even though no equines involved. Now banned due to having the word “ESKIMO” in it, apparently. It is disrespectful to call Innuit people “Eskimo”. As a result, youngsters these days will not be exposed to the dream of greatness in the whole wide world being able to come from humble, unexpected and disreguarded beginnings. Instead, there is pablum and the marketing of toys for parents to buy.

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Still have that one and Album of Horses, too. Also My Friend Flicka, Thunderhead and The Green Grass of Wyoming.

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Along with all of these do you remember Doorthy Lyons? She wrote a LOT of horsie books in different disciplines. I think there was a western one and a saddlebred one and of course the ones about jumpers. And my favorite, Smoke Rings. I had that one and loaned it to a friend who moved away without returning it. About ten years ago, I looked for it on line-$150.

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I remember Dorothy Lyons. Loved her stuff.

My favorite from childhood was Ride Like an Indian. Kid at a dude ranch teamed up with a (seemingly) half dead appy, who teaches him a thing or two.

I have a very horsey British friend and when I was last up visiting, she gave me her favorite from her childhood, and I absolutely hated it. Good thing I can’t remember the title!!!

Fly By Night. It was by K.M Peyton.

Got it through the scholastic book orders in elementary school and I have read it hundreds of times. It was realistic and I could relate to Ruth and what she went through with her pony.

I think if I read it now I would feel the same. My daughter has it in her room.

Love Dorothy Lyons’ stuff. I have slowly been acquiring it as I can find it for reasonable prices. I read most of them from the library as a little kid. But yes, hers are pricey now. I have actually told my family, if I get killed in a car wreck, do not just throw all these books in a box and donate to the library. You will be astounded to know the value of some of those, even the worn used copies. I do have Smoke Rings, and it’s great.

One of my prizes is Locket, sequel to Serilda’s Star but far, far harder to find. It was a very small print run. I searched for years, routinely ran searches on ABEbooks. Finally, I found one copy. The poster said that it had some wear but that it was, as near as he could tell, the sole copy of that book in the United States advertised for sale. $30. I paid without a qualm, just hoped that somebody else didn’t beat me to the buy button. I like it even better than the first book, but it is scarce.

I found The Horsemasters on the last day of the Friends of the Library sale, bag day. Given what else went into my $1 bag along with it, I paid about 2 cents. Somebody at the library sale dropped the ball there in prescreening by not sending it to the better books side. They had no idea what that little paperback was worth.

Another favorite from childhood, from those Weekly Reader book flyers we used to get, was The Golden Horse of Willow Farm. I recently bought a replacement to replace my original childhood paperback, which was literally falling apart.

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Man, now we need to do a book swap for the ones some of us haven’t read. :rofl: And I’m window shopping on eBay wondering what the other half would say if I asked for some of these for Christmas…

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Was there anything more exciting than when the Scholastic order showed up eight or 10 weeks later, and you had forgotten all about it?

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Oooh I have a collection of Paul Brown kid’s books about the circus family and their horse (Crazy Quilt), Piper’s Pony, the scotty and some others I think. I have a book of his on how to draw horses too. I adored them all.

And I have a signed copy of his (adult) book, Ups and Downs. It depicts the successes and failures of riding and owning horses.

I’m going to have to sell them someday as none of the grandkids have any interest.

Saddle Club and Thoroughbred book series. Loved them! I’m pretty sure I donated most of them to the local library but I will have to look when I go home for the holidays.

Oh I think I remember that one! :slight_smile:

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I still have most of mine - most of the Black Stallion books, Marguerite Henry books, Flicka trilogy, Little Britches, one about a retired firehorse, etc. My favorite was Smoky the Cowhorse by Will James, though.

Besides Smoky the Cowhorse, I think my favorite book was about a cow, not a horse. It was The Little Cow and the Turtle by Meindert DeJong, who is more famous for “The Wheel on the School”. I picked it up at a used book sale when I was a kid in the late 70’s but it’s from the 50s. I was happy to be able to read it to my kid as bedtime reading.

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I still have all of mine… when I last moved, I changed most of my adult library over to digital but could not part with all the horse books. I have many already mentioned (The Black Stallion series, Silver Brumby series, Saddle Club, etc). Another series I treasure are the Jinny books by Patricia Leitch. The Jill series by Ruby Ferguson is a fun one. Also loved the various books by the Pullein-Thompson sisters.

At some point, maybe I will find a horsey child to pass them along to… otherwise whoever inherits my crap when I die will have to deal with them!

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I still remember the day several years ago when I was first starting to do volunteer work at the library. I got there and asked, still learning the ropes, what a large several-column stack of books was doing on one counter. Oh, those were some discards to be processed. Every now and then, we go through and remove stuff that hasn’t been out in a coon’s age. So these were waiting to move on to be donated. I asked if I could browse through them quickly, and the director said sure, that was one of the points of pay (I work there free). Any worker is welcome to glean in discards. So I started just casually looking through these books and discovered a COMPLETE MATCHED SET (!!!) of the Little Britches series.

It’s in my library today, filed in the children’s literature bookcase. :slight_smile: :slight_smile:

Volunteer at the library, folks. You never know what you will find there. I’ve also found other books of interest. One of them, Black Horse of Culver, is in the bookcase above and is quite good. The two Windy Foot books there also came from the library.

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I have all of the Margarite Henry books. They are amazing. I also have some Walter Farley. I read everything that I could get my hands on, but the book that affected me the most was “The Will to Win”, which is the story of Jay Trump. I seriously recommend it. Beautifully written, and an amazing tale.

When I was in high school, Jay Trump- brought in from retirement turnout, Mountain Dew- his nemesis- and several other retired great steeplechasers appeared under saddle at the Hunt Cup. It was a frigid day and windy. Jay Trump came galloping up last as the announcer said his name. I actually felt sorry for the guy who was on him. Jay Trump was covered in sweat, and his neck sweat was frothy from the reins, and they guy was having his arms pulled out. The horse was in his late 20’s, and he was still going to win. The fact that they let the others go first was lost on him- they were targets- and in spite of the fact that the jock was hanging on his mouth for dear life. I was in awe.

Jay Trumps ashes are spread on the steeplechase course at the Horse Park in Lexington.

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Long ago I set my Black Stallion, Marguerite Henry, and Jean Slaughter-Doty books free, along with my Breyers. I kept a few though, including these two. I’m surprised to see that Smoky was published in 1929! It certainly has that wonderful old book smell.

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I think the only book I have from my childhood is King of the Wind. We were poor, so I didn’t get many books of my own. But by golly our school library had them all, and I read every single horse-themed book in there multiple times.
When I got old enough to buy my own I had Black Beauty. But by that time I wasn’t reading stories anymore I was buying ‘how-to’ books.
When I had my own children, you betcha by golly when that Scholastic order came around they got as much as I could afford. I still have some of them that my boys liked.

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I’m still very very bitter about loaning my Thelwell hardbacks out to an aspiring teen cartoonist. Grrrrr.

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