I love books almost as much as I love horses. And this has been going on since I was very young. While many girls my age, maybe 9 or so, were devouring Nancy Drew (and I love a good mystery), I was searching the shelves in our one room village library for stories about animals.
I’d gather them up, go up to the librarian’s desk and watch her put that magical due date stamp on the card and then in the book. Yes, I’m old enough to remember that ancient system.
Favorites were Black Beauty by Anna Sewell…way too sad for me to read now…I was braver at nine; Beautiful Joe by Marshall Saunders: first published in 1894, a story from a faithful dog’s viewpoint about his abused and then rescued life; Smoky the Cow Horse by Will James: about a horse who is lost and then found; and anything by Walter Farley who wrote the Black Stallion series. I sent away for a “signed” photograph of Walter Farley and still have it in the horse scrap book I put together, in which I pasted clippings of race horses and my very amateurish attempts at drawing horses!
I’m sure there are many other titles that I have loved and forgotten.
More recent horsey titles I have enjoyed are:
The Eighty Dollar Champion: Snowman, the Horse That Inspired a Nation by Elizabeth Letts: A story about a horse rescued literally on his way to slaughter who became a champion jumper.
Chosen by a Horse: How a Broken Horse Fixed a Broken Heart by Susan Richards
Saving Baby: How One Woman’s Love For a Racehorse Led to Her Redemption by Jo Anne Normile and Lawrence Lindner
Horses Never Lie About Love: The Heartwarming Story of a Remarkable Horse Who Changed the World Around Her by Jana Harris
Now that the longer days of summer are here, I may read them all again! I hope you have a stack of books nearby to get you through the summer, and I hope that at least one is about a horse.