Findings

Revisiting the stories of childhood with my children has been stirring. It recalls old dreams to mind, old feelings of security, old ways of imagining and knowing.

What would have happened if I’d been able to take horseback riding lessons when I was young? Would I have developed an eating disorder in high school if I’d been pursuing an interest actively, one that involved caring for another living thing? Would I have travelled the long academic, intellectual road I ended up on? Or would I have taken a different route, one where the abstract life of the mind is bound up with the full-bodied creaturely life? What if the passion for all things horseworthy had been a lifestyle rather than an imaginative escape? 

I remember that for my seventh birthday, I got a horseback ride at a nearby campground. My brother was much more of a natural than I was. I remember looking at our shadows as the horses trotted up a hill. His showed a human body that was one with the horse. Mine showed a small shadow bouncing up and down on the horse’s back, perilously close to sailing off entirely.

The dreams stayed firmly in place and sent roots far down. I went on reading horse books. I envied two of my friends who took riding lessons, something we couldn’t afford. The closest I came myself was riding in circles in the back yard on a horse named Scooter who belonged to a neighbor. One day he got sick of it, and ran off over the hill to go home — with me still on his back. I remember that feeling of taking off into the unknown, realizing that I could do whatever gymnastics I wanted with the reins without changing the basic scenario: Scooter was driving, and I was along for the ride. Finally the owner, a good-natured high school student, caught up with us on foot, shaking her finger at the horse and saying, “Scooter, you die!”
 
Here’s Scooter, a 9-year-old writer2b on his back, with my brother steadying him:

It was a joy to give my daughter horseback riding lessons in the fall of last year. Doesn’t she look tiny? 

But in writing this, I realize by now the sense of regret that hangs with me. I know I need to guard against trying to live my own lost dreams through her. I know I need to be careful not to ignore her other interests when we go to the library or make decisions about extra-curricular activities to invest in. I know she’s not me.

But it’s still true that though she’s her own person, she shares these dreams of my younger self. There’s something a little sad, but also a little healing, and a lot fun, to reread all these books together. I think they’re even a bit of a protective wall against forcing my unlived life on her; these stories represent other people’s visions, filters that strain out and redistribute any of my personal “stuff.” And each time I close a book, it reinforces that I chose a different path from these horse-people in the stories.

All of this to say that revisiting old books with my daughter means revisiting old dreams. We sit side-by-side on the couch, she with her self-in-formation, everything new, everything exciting; I sit there with a self largely formed, returning to something no longer new.

And yet it is new. The dreams as they’re encased in stories aren’t; the stories and their formulas have been around for a long time. But there next to me is a new thing, a little girl with a heart full of dreams, her own person, yet also a reminder of my own past self. How will her story turn out?

My daughter is the artist of both pictures in this post.

Curious about what kinds of comparisons might emerge among the many horse books I’ve read to my 7-year-old daughter, I’ve started keeping track. I want to do one more post about them, then wait till a few more accumulate before doing another. One qualification: we also read books on other topics! These are ones that relate to a particular interest of hers, but she has other interests too, as does my 4-year-old daughter.

Kathy Wilmore’s Horses! has been a great resource for my older daughter to learn about different breeds of horses. It’s loaded with beautiful photos, and it’s been perfect for her to read in the evening during her designated “read in bed time.” It’s a factual book, not a storybook, great for young sponges who want to absorb as much as they can about horses. She gave a presentation on her horse collection for a hobby exhibition with her Brownie troop, and I was caught by surprise at how many breeds and their distinctives she was able to name. I’m sure this book is a big reason why. 

This book is a source of information about the different types of horses and their respective roles and talents. Each chapter is narrated by a different girl who tells the reader about her horse and the work they do together. The table of contents is here. It contains a collection of tear-out trading cards in the back, and my daughter has learned a ton about the different breeds this way.

I Wonder Why Horses Wear Shoes is another favorite informational book. It’s a slim paperback with lots of illustrations, organized according to questions. It accompanies us many places because it’s easy to carry and useful for young information hounds.

Flip, and Flip and the Cows, are paperbacks that survived my own childhood. Flip is a young colt learning about life as a horse, and he was my first acquaintance with Wesley Dennis as an illustrator. Later I would discover his illustrations in many Marguerite Henry books. The stories are simple and good for young children. My 7-year-old has outgrown the stories, but not the illustrations.

Sometimes I Dream Horses, written by Jeanne Whitehouse Peterson and illustrated with beautiful pencil drawings by Eleanor Schick, is about a young girl who dreams of horses on her grandmother’s farm in the Southwest. We found it at the library. It’s a nice story about horse-lovers in two generations.

Winter Pony is Jean Slaughter Doty’s sequel to Summer Pony. This story follows Ginny through a winter with her pony Mokey, who learns how to pull a sleigh and then is discovered to be in foal. There’s more of Pam and Ginny’s developing friendship as well as lots of description of this exciting new chapter of life for Mokey. The story culminates in the foal’s birth, with Ginny supervising. It’s very readable and enjoyable, and we finished it in under a week.

This one was given to us by my friend JW. It’s about a Native American girl who prefers horses to human companions, and eventually gets her wish to live with them, with the blessing of her family. The illustrations are lovely, simple and stylized. Our other book about a Native American child who longs for a horse is Indian Two-Feet and His Horse, a book saved since my own childhood. It’s written by Margaret Friskey and illustrated by Ezra Jack Keats, and tells the tale of a boy who longs for a horse, finds a wounded one, and builds a lasting friendship by caring for it. Both these tales offer an alternative to the conquering notion of ownership, and present instead a vision of friendship with the natural world.

One other book we found at the library is about a Native American boy with a love for a horse: Black Kettle: King of the Wild Horses by Justin Denzel. Though the initial picture of Native Americans isn’t flattering — Little Bear, a 9-year-old, is part of a raid on settlers, and he steals the black colt — the relationship between Native Americans and settlers quickly fades into the background. However the theme of the Native American valuing wildness and freedom more than the white man remains at the forefront of the story; Little Bear frees the colt, who becomes famous as “king of the wild horses” and is targeted for capture more than once by a shopkeeper named Lockard. I have to believe this is a main source of the story in Disney’s movie Spirit. It’s interesting that none of these three stories identify their main characters as belonging to a particular tribe.

Now for some more oldies: Little Black, A Pony by Walter Farley is about a boy whose small black pony is relegated to semi-retirement when the boy learns to ride a larger horse, only to rise to heroism when the boy falls through the ice later in the story, and Little Black pulls him out. This one is good for an early reader. There’s some tension, but also a subtheme about importance and friendship not being determined by visible things. Both the boy and the pony learn this; the boy learns that riding a big horse doesn’t make him independent or all-powerful after all, and the pony learns that there are some things his small size enables him and him alone to do.

Last but not least, there have been a number of C.W. Anderson books that offer adventure and mild tension, equestrian knowledge, and great drawings. It’s been nice to follow Billy and his pony Blaze through a series of picture books. Stories like The Rumble Seat Pony, A Pony for Three, and The Lonesome Colt round out the collection, building on the winning theme of children and their horses. My daughter knows which shelf these are on at the library, so we’ve brought them home more than once — well-worn pieces of history that have been loved by many before us.

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….

This morning I ventured into the attic, nagged by the sense that I’d seen copies of some of the books of my youth semi-recently. Lo and behold, there was a box of treasures! For starters, here are the horse books:

1. Helen Kay’s A Pony for the Winter
2. Rutherford Montgomery’s El Blanco — The Legend of the White Stallion
3. Stephen Holt’s The Phantom Roan
4. Dorothy Brenner Francis’ The Flint Hills Foal
5. Sam Savitt’s Vicki and the Black Horse
6. Glen Rounds’ The Blind Colt
7. Lynn Hall’s Wild Mustang
8. Walter Farley’s The Black Stallion and The Black Stallion Returns
9. Doris Gates’ Little Vic
10. Margaret Goff Clark’s Mystery Horse
11. Anita Feagles’ Casey: The Utterly Impossible Horse

(Gee, I wonder where my daughter’s horse-passion comes from…)

And besides these, there were a few others like Little Women, Encyclopedia Brown, Pippi Longstocking, a few Beverly Cleary books, children’s biographies of Helen Keller and Louisa May Alcott, etc.

Most or all of these would be available at the library, of course. But there’s something about finding my own old copies that’s hard to describe. These are chunks of myself. How can inanimate objects be so significant?

I also wonder how much my own attachment to these books is influencing my daughters. A lot, I’m sure. But that’s not something I’m going to get analytical about. I love that when I plopped the box down at the foot of the attic stairs, they were on it in a heartbeat, raking through the books on the floor, exclaiming, carrying them off to pore over on their own.

Summer Pony by Jean Slaughter Doty is the latest in my read-aloud syllabus for my horse-loving 7-year-old. It’s a story about Ginny, a middle-school aged girl whose family rents a pony for the summer. Though she has dreams of a sleek and beautiful pony, the one she ends up with is an underfed, shaggy, unimpressive pinto with unmatching eyes, rented from a pony farm that badly neglects its animals.

The story has lots of great ingredients: rescue and restoration of an animal in poor condition, a heroine who’s learning the ropes of pony care along with the reader, and the overcoming of first impressions to form a friendship (as Ginny does with her neighbor). Best of all for the young horse fan is the winning combination of understanding parents, and the conversion of a garage into a pony stall. What pony-lover hasn’t entertained that dream? I know I did.

Ginny, the story’s heroine, is plausible. She has her issues with negative attitude and self-doubt, but she grows a lot over the course of the story and gains confidence in the process. The reading level of this book is probably 3rd-6th grade, but my first-grader was able to work through the text herself. I read it aloud, but often she’d get the jump on me by taking it to bed with her and reading before lights out. (So far she hasn’t discovered reading under the covers with a flashlight…)

The question now is where to go from here. I found this list of 30 best horse books, of which we’ve read four: Summer Pony, Old Bones the Wonder Horse, Misty of Chincoteague, and Black Beauty. What next? I notice Ruffian is on this list, and it’s out of the question… I’m still wrenched every time I think of Eight Belles put down after her second place finish at the Derby last week. I dimly remember a book called A Pony for the Winter; maybe that would be the next logical choice. I’m open to suggestions. Meantime it’s back to watching my daughter pore over her well-worn Breyer’s horses catalogue, checking the boxes of… well, pretty much every model ever made and making plans for saving her money.

I just think Arnold Lobel is a dear man. That’s a mushier evaluation than I usually give, but I can’t help it. His birthday is this month, and I chose him for the Celebrate the Author Challenge. He’s an author I enjoyed as a child myself, and now again with my children.

If you’ve ever read the Frog and Toad stories, maybe you know what I mean. What a pair these two old bachelors are! So complementary in their personalities. So physically unattractive (unless you have a thing for amphibians, as I admittedly did in first grade). So… human.

In our house, “I’m having a Toad kind of a day” has become part of our specialized family discourse. When you wake up feeling a bit grumpy, stodgy, easily panicked, and inflexible, you’re having a Toad day. Toad somehow stays lovable in the stories despite this. Perhaps it’s because Lobel has balanced him so perfectly with his tall green friend Frog, who’s almost always cheerful, fun-loving, loyal, and encouraging.

My favorite stories come from Frog and Toad Together. I love “Cookies,” for instance, because it’s so darn true. Fresh-baked cookies have always been my Waterloo, the demands of willpower notwithstanding, so I can relate to these guys when they can’t resist some cookies Toad has baked, and resort to all kind of foolish attempts to trick themselves into not eating any more. And then there’s “Dragons and Giants,” where they read a story together and then go looking for adventure to prove their mettle. The story ends with them back home, safe, but hiding. Are they brave? What makes a person (or a small squishy animal) brave?

I could talk about every single story in the book. I like them all. But the most complex is “The Dream.” Toad dreams that he’s onstage, with Frog his only audience, and a booming voice announcing his many accomplishments. The applause is deafening, but with each succeeding performance, Frog shrinks until Toad can no longer find him. It’s a story about the costs of competetiveness, told feelingly, compellingly, and memorably. It’s a wonderful find for children.

This audiobook is one we own, and I recommend it. Arnold Lobel himself is the reader, and he has the most warm, friendly voice. It’s perfect for these stories, all of which convey a gentle wisdom fleshed out in true-to-life relationships and situations. My only regret is that my daughters have listened to it so much, they have the stories memorized and can no longer benefit from these books as readers. But no matter. I’ll take them on any terms.

We read Mildred Mastin Pace’s Old Bones the Wonder Horse as a read-aloud. I remember my mother reading it to me many years ago. It’s the true story of Exterminator, a racehorse dubbed Old Bones because of his ungainly appearance. Bought as a “work horse” to challenge Sun Briar, a more favored thoroughbred in training, Exterminator instead begins a long and illustrious racing career of his own when Sun Briar is unable to run the Kentucky Derby. Exterminator races in his place and wins.

This book follows his racing career until he retires at the age of 9; his adjustment to retirement and attachments to Peanuts and Peanuts II, two ponies bought as companions for him; and his lifelong friendships with Henry McDaniel (his trainer), Mike Terry (his groom, who meets him at his first Derby and never leaves him), and others. The book does justice to this remarkable animal, developing his intelligence, his steady personality so unusual in a thoroughbred, and his sociability. My 7-year-old (and I) laughed aloud at times over the characterization of this distinctive horse who embodies a combination of wisdom. playfulness, determination and physical giftedness. There’s more information about Exterminator here, here, and here. 

My daughter has been listening to Black Beauty on cd alongside our reading of this book, and there’s a marked contrast between the two stories. Black Beauty is a tale I’d never survive as a read-aloud because it’s so desperately sad. Its arguments against vice and cruelty gain their momentum from the tremendous hardship Black Beauty and his fellow horses have to endure at the hands of their human handlers. But this story is poignant without being heart-breaking. Its reading level is 3rd-6th grade, but as an adult I enjoyed it every bit as much as my daughter did.

Interestingly enough, in reading about Exterminator I’ve discovered two interesting facts about him: first, that he was born on Almahurst Farm near Lexington, a few miles from my alma mater in the heart of bluegrass country; and second, that my daughters were born in a hospital located on property that was once part of the Kilmer farm at which he lived out his last years. He’s buried at a pet cemetery close by. When I talked this over with the librarian, he told me he visits the gravesite every year, because Exterminator was “one of the greats.” This book makes a convincing argument that he’s right. 

We read Marguerite Henry’s Brighty of the Grand Canyon as a family read-aloud. I read it long ago, probably when I was 11 or 12, but remembered virtually nothing. How can this be? It’s full of excitement and the usual emotional highs and lows of animal stories. This one includes a prospector, a lion hunter, a president, and a murderer along with the noble and unassuming Brighty the burro. It also incorporates Ms. Henry’s now familiar theme of love for wild places, taking place in the Grand Canyon before it was made a national park. What’s wrong with me that my mind permits such good stuff to evaporate, while certain episodes of The Little Rascals are firmly established there till my dying day?

In any case, this book was a success for both mother and 7-year-old daughter. The only thing I disliked was what I always dislike about animal stories: bad people who enter the scene and abuse the animals. Fortunately in all the Marguerite Henry novels I’ve read, the animals triumph in the end. But sometimes they have hard going at the hands of people far more brutish than they are. The villain in this story is truly diabolical, a vicious criminal who’s counterbalanced by the brave, straight-shooting (both literally and figuratively) Uncle Jim Owens. His character is carefully and lovingly drawn, respectful of the real Jim Owens after whom he’s modelled.

I should add too that this worked well as a read-aloud. The narrative is interesting and dramatic, and the dialogue/dialect are fun to bring to life.

Brighty was a real burro, named “Bright Angel” after Bright Angel Creek, and some information is gathered about him here. There’s also a movie about him, in which Marguerite Henry’s own burro Jiggs plays Brighty. Though I did know a Breyer’s horse figurine exists (no longer in production), I didn’t realize it replicates a statue of Brighty that sits at the north rim of the Grand Canyon. All of this testifies to Brighty’s popularity and indicates that my enjoyment of this story treads an already well-established path.  

We finished Marguerite Henry’s Justin Morgan Had a Horse as a family read-aloud. The book was a satisfying experience for us, and my daughter (7) is at this moment coloring a detailed picture of a Morgan in honor of Little Bub, the story’s equine protagonist.

This tale apparently takes some liberties crafting a book about the life and times of “Figure,” the founding sire of the Morgan breed, depicted in this story as Little Bub. The role of Joel Goss, the boy who gentles Little Bub and spends his whole life yearning to own, and eventually purchasing, the horse, is exaggerated. Many of the legends and facts about the little horse’s life are portrayed faithfully, however, including his role carrying President Monroe in a parade, winning fame at pulling bees and races, and serving dependably as a workhorse in Vermont.

Whatever quibbles one may have with the book’s one-to-one correspondence with historical details, it captures without question the distinctiveness of the original Morgan and the breed he sired. Convincing characterization, dialogue, and contextualization in events help to bring a chapter of American history to life. And though this tale recounts truthfully the kind of neglect, and sometimes abuse, animals often suffer under human care, it also captures the transforming effect quality stewardship can have on both horse and owner, and the powerful affection that can enrich the relationship between them.

This story was rewarding for both my daughter and me. The text was entertaining, and though it challenged a 7-year-old in some spots through its historical references and dialect, these were easily surmounted without getting bogged down in explanation. (The reading level is aimed at middle school, I’d guess.) For anyone looking for either a historical story encompassing the period from 1790 - 1820, or one that builds appreciation for a unique breed, this novel delivers.

We finished Marguerite Henry’s White Stallion of Lipizza as a family read-aloud. I shouldn’t be surprised to be blubbering at the end, since I always do in animal stories. But I found this story extraordinarily touching – not sad, but moving. It’s a story about young Hans Haupt, a 13-year-old son of a baker in Vienna, who dreams of being a rider for the elite Spanish Court Riding School.

I liked it because the story takes us through the years of determination and hunger for knowledge and hard, often tedious work his dream involves. I liked it because Hans has as unlikely a dream as could be imagined, and he achieves it against the odds. I liked it for the illustrations, sketches by Wesley Dennis, a true seer of horses. I liked it for its educational value. I liked it for its modeling of a heroism earned through great effort and patience and humility, not just easy brilliance. Let’s face it: I liked it!

My daughter is (just barely) 7, and though the language of the story is at times technical, and is never really aimed at someone younger than probably 10 or 11, she listened eagerly to the whole thing. It’s dense with information, and her stuffed horses are now training to do the corbette and the piaffe and various other high-sounding ballet moves. (In addition to this tale, we watched Miracle of the White Stallions last week while this book was still in process, and it provided some nice historic supplementation as well as a glimpse of the Lipizzaners in action. However in all honesty, the dressage in this clip on YouTube surpasses that seen in the movie.) 

I value this book for its wonderful factual content, but even more importantly because it gives us a language for talking about both dreams and hard work. That’s something she will benefit from every bit as much as those stuffed horses.