Pony Mad & Precocious

We have been talking about the ages of pony book authors in a couple of threads on the ponymadbooklovers forum and what really struck me is that there seems to be a trend amongst the writers of these books to start very young. Some of the authors who wrote their first pony book when only teenagers include:

K. M .Peyton - 15 when she wrote Sabre The Horse From the Sea (under the name of Kathleen Herald) and still a teenager when she penned her second novel The Mandrake.

Moyra Charlton - amazingly only around 11 or 12 when she wrote her first book Tally Ho.

Primrose Cumming - a teenager when she wrote Doney

Sheila Chapman - wrote all of her four books when very young.

Gillian Baxter - a teenager when she penned what is probably still her best-loved book Jump For the Stars

Avrill Knott - wrote Pony of Gold when she was 15

The Pullein-Thompson sisters - teenagers when they collaborated on their first book Picotee

Granted, some of these early efforts did not scale the heights of timeless prose, however one or two were amazingly mature works. In particular, I would highlight K. M. Peyton's second novel The Mandrake: it is hard to reconcile the maturity and skill of this book with the actual age of its author.

It is difficult to come up with a reason for this precocity. One suggestion is that children matured more quickly then. But if we examine the ages of some of the non-pony female authors of the same period, such as Enid Blyton, E. M. Brent-Dyer, Noel Streatfield, Richmal Crompton and Lorna Hill, we find that all of these authors were in their 20s to 40s when they began writing novels. It does in fact seem a trend amongst horsy rather than general authors.

Does the responsibility of looking after a pony and the discipline of learning to ride make a child grow up more quickly? This however would not account for the early talents of K. M. Peyton who did not actually have a horse before she wrote her first books.

Did the horsy set move in more upper class circles in which some sort of 'old boy's network' would enable the young author to take a fast track into publishing. This could of course account for the P-T sisters who came from an extremely literary circle and whose acquaintances would of course have included publishers, but once again it would not account for others such as K. M. Peyton who came from ordinary working class backgrounds.

Perhaps there is some mysterious link between loving ponies and wanting to write about them. Do horses inspire a lyricism, a desire to share one's love of them with others via the written word? I'm sure I am not the only one who, as a teenager, wrote pony stories or even a book. (My own effort has (perhaps mercifully) been lost somewhere in the seemingly endless clutter of childhood detritus. But was I feeling the same urge to write as my authoress heroines?

It would be nice to come up with a theory to neatly explain the precocity (and if anyone has any suggestions please let me know!) However, whatever the reason, let us be grateful that our favourite authors did not consign their early works to a dusty attic along with their old dolls and teddies, but allowed the rest of us to share their youthful writings.

Books versus Hunks!

Due to internet and other technical problems taking up most of my time over the past few days, this weeks blog is very short (and not very serious). For a bit of a laugh we at the ponymadbooklovers forum decided to start a "hot men" thread. A few days later and the flipping thing is now the longest and most visited thread on the forum! I don't know if its true that, as someone on the forum said, horsy gals are all man-mad, but whatever it is poor old Jill, Jackie and the like have now been abandoned and replaced by a succession of male pin-ups. My computer hard-drive, once the province only of pics of cute kittens, horses and various dustjackets, has now been invaded by a bevy of half-dressed hunks!

And there seems to be no stopping us. I think the only way we will get a more popular thread is if someone discovers a sequel to Silver Snaffles hidden away in their loft or finds out they are the long-lost love-child of Ruby Ferguson...

Which one would you like to take to bed with you on a cold night?

Answers on a postcard please!

Bargain Horses...one of her best!

Apart from the Bobby and Shelta series, I have never been a huge fan of Gillian Baxter's stories for older children. Although her books are pleasant enough reads, for me they lack a certain something. (And I am ashamed to say, despite two or three attempts, I have never managed to get to the end of Tan and Tarmac!) However I had heard good things about Bargain Horses and the sound of the plot was intriguing so I thought I would give it a go.

I'm really glad I did. IMHO Bargain Horses is one of the author's best, perhaps the best since the Bobby and Shelta books. The plot centres around Gemma, a sixteen-ish girl whose mother has a strange habit of buying cheap horses, hoping that she can miraculously transform one of them into the next top eventing star. Her obsession has driven away her husband, used up all their money until they have to live in a caravan, and is now taking over Gemma's life.

What I love most about this book is the way it turns the usual pony book scenario on its head. Whereas we usually have a horse-mad heroine whose parents are constantly trying to get them to do more school work and have a life outside horses, this book is the complete opposite. Gemma is the one who wants to do well at school and is prevented by her mother who feels that school gets in the way of their training schedule! Gemma thinks that she may possibly like to have a career away from horses, it is her mother who wants her to become a top eventer. Unlike most pony book heroines, Gemma feels that horses are getting in the way of other things she would like to do: such as go to parties and have a boyfriend.

The book has a plot that keeps you reading (although I did guess the end!) and the characters of Gemma and her mother Mary are brilliantly drawn. Mary must be one of the most three-dimensional adult characters in any pony book. Sadly in this genre, the adults are often very sketchily drawn or simply caricatures, but not so in this novel. Gemma, too, is a multi-faceted character who is torn between her love of horses and her yearning to have a life of her own.

Bargain Horses is part of the series of pony books published by J.A.Allen in the 1990s, most of which are aimed at older teenagers and adults (as is this one). I have read most of the books in this series and they have all been excellent. They are particularly suitable for adult horse and pony enthusiasts, especially this book.

I have now completed a more detailed review of the book. To read it click here

Christmas...not so bad after all?

I am not really a Christmassy person. I used to quite like it when it meant escaping work for a couple of weeks, but even that bonus is missing now that I am self-employed.

Everything about it seems to have become an irritation, from the hideously cheerful Christmas songs that begin playing everywhere from October onwards, to the desperate grubbing around trying to find a present more interesting than the usual socks, to the yearly search for the Christmas tree and decorations which never seem to be in the place you remember putting them, to the endless trailing round visiting relatives whom though you only see once a year, its still once a year too much. It's enough to have you reaching for the brandy instead of putting it in the Christmas cake! And then of course there is the orgy of eating and drinking leaving you feeling full of guilt and indigestion as a year's dieting is blown in a week.

But before you are sending me the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future, I do have some nice words to say about Christmas. Well, one, really. Books.

Santa has thankfully ignored the fact I have not been a good little girl and brought me a bumper crop of pony books which I have been looking for to add to my collection. These include Gillian Baxter's Bargain Horses, K. M. Peyton's The Sound of Distant Cheering and The Grey Ghost by Carolyn Henderson, none of which I have read before. But the best of all by far are a pair of books whose arrival has almost made me want to start singing Jingle Bells and wearing a pair of furry antlers on my head.

These are a first edition of Sabre The Horse From the Sea by Kathleen Herald (aka K. M. Peyton) and also by her a 1950s edition of The Mandrake a Pony.

So pass the After Eight Mints and turkey sandwiches round one more time, turn up the volume on that Christmas Compilation CD, I don't care. I will have my head buried in one of these beauties.

Maybe Christmas isn't so bad after all...

The Marvellous Mongolian - an unusual pony book

Just been reading this book which must be one of the most unusual pony books I've read in a long while. Why? Well, first of all it is about a breed of horse which I've never come across mentioned in a pony book before - the Przewalski horse (also known as the Wild Mongolian Horse). This is a very rare breed which is thought to be the only true wild horse breed in the world. It must also be the hardest breed to spell too!

Secondly the book is set in many different countries, mainly in Mongolia (as to be expected) and Wales. The Welsh setting may seem a natural backdrop for a pony story, but have there been any other pony books set in Asia? Pony books rarely feature countries other than the UK, USA or Australia. The customs and setting of the Mongolian part of the story make for an eye-opening and very interesting read.

Thirdly the way the book is written is very unusual. The whole story is narrated through letters between a girl in Wales and a boy in Mongolia. This type of narrative was very common in British literature around the 18th century but today is extremely unusual. The nearest I've seen to it is in Judith Berrisford's Jackie books where the author uses Jackie's occaisional letters to her parents to update the story and move the plot forward. It may seem a little off-putting to the reader but it actually makes for a very interesting read as we see the characters and customs of two children from different sides of the world.

And lastly, in a genre that is often criticised for its cliched story-lines, the plot is also very unusual. It concerns a wild Mongolian stallion who is captured and sent to a Welsh nature reserve as part of a breeding program. The stallion comes from a wild herd which was was first spotted by a Mongolian boy. The stallion is hoped to breed with a Shetland pony who has been looked after by a girl in Wales. The boy and girl begin to exchange letters, and through them the whole story of what happens next unfolds.

Hopefully I will have time to do a full review of the book on my website. In the meantime I would recommend it as an excellent read especially if you are looking for something different.

Jackie has man trouble

I have recently been re-reading (almost) the entire Jackie series in an attempt to sort out the series order. Whilst I have been reading I have realised that Jackie (and Babs too) do not have a very good time of it with men. In so many books in the series they seem to be at loggerheads with some man or boy whom they admire but who emphatically does not reciprocate the feeling!

We see this first in Jackie and the Pony Trekkers in which the girls get up the nose of John who runs the Pinewoods Trekking centre. Despite doing a load of stable work, helping with the trekkers and lending the centre their own ponies the girls irritate him to the extent he sends them packing! Then the hapless pair encounter another hostile male in Jackie's Pony Camp Summer. They so antagonise Paul, one of the brother's of the camp's organisers that he runs off with his pony to get away from them! In Jackie on Pony Island they go out of their way to help a family who are trying to raise money by giving pony rides on the beach. Despite giving up their holidays to help and lending their ponies for the beach rides, Dave, the elder brother of the family is constantly exasperated with them, and like John at the trekking centre decides to give them the boot.

But perhaps the book in which the girls excel themselves is Jackie and the Pony Boys in which they manage to annoy not just one but three boys! After the girls have finished with them one of the boy's ponies has been lamed, Patch has caused havoc, the girls have sparked off a fight between two of the boys in which one of them falls down the stairs and knocks himself out, and Jackie has managed to accidentally knock another one of the lads down a mine shaft causing him to sprain his shoulder and putting him out of the riding competition he had been training for all summer. Despite all this, one of the boys is actually quite friendly to the girls and they, no doubt shocked that a male actually likes them for once, end up fighting over him and not speaking to each other!

Makes me wonder if JB really liked men all that much as so many of the male characters in her books were irritating, touchy or ungrateful. And it is clear that in the end Jackie and Babs will always win the battle of the sexes by rescuing or in some way saving the bacon of the man in question. (Instead of thumping them which is what I probably would have done!)

They save John from a fire, Dave is rescued from drowning and Paul gains his nerve again only after galloping off to save Misty. The girls even somehow manage to placate all three of the Pony Boys in the end!

It somehow seems fitting that Jackie and Babs stayed the eternally youthful age of around fourteen over the 26 years the series spanned. If they could cause so much trouble with men at that age I dread to think what havoc they could have wreaked on the male population if they had ever grown up!

House moving nightmare!

Haven't had a chance to blog for ages. I am in the midst of a legal wrangle with a mortgage company after they have suddenly pulled their mortgage offer only a few days before I was due to sign contracts and move house. This is the latest in a long line of disasters and problems which have turned my latest house-move into a seemingly never-ending 16 month nightmare.

It all began when I put my house up for sale at exactly the same time as the housing market in my town suddenly died. I have endured a year of people traipsing through my home, poking in cupboards and even examining the dirty dishes in my dishwasher. I've put up with kids running riot, chasing my terrified cats, getting under the bed and in my laundry basket. I've spent so many hours hoovering, tidying and washing windows, trying to keep the place tidy, that I have vowed to live in squalor from now on! I have gone through two estate agents, have had the house up for auction twice, have had a sale fall through, have dropped the price three times and finally sold it just as I was about to despair and rent it out. I've been gazumped on the house I was buying, and ended up buying the same house from a different owner (don't ask!) - after all this I was finally starting to breathe a sigh of relief, thinking that the end was in sight.

And now this. With Christmas only a month away I am facing the possibility of having nowhere to live - or what is infinitely worse, having to move in with the parents!