about aspiring eventer Elaine and the eccentric, aristocratic and impoverished Fane
family. More recently the ubiquitous American Saddle Club series has appeared, full of
thinly disguised instruction on the care of the horse with some teenage romance to
sugar the pill, but the writers could learn a lot from earlier pony books about the art of
combining fact and fiction. Established authors are still in print and some older stories,
most recently Christine PulleinThompson’s, are being updated and reissued. Publishers
have now turned their attention to younger readers and new pony books are aimed at
the under-10s. It seems there is still life in the genre and while adolescent girls continue
to have a passion for ponies, the pony book will survive.
ReferencesBagnold, E. (1935) National Velvet, London: Heinemann.
Chitty, S. (1971) The Woman who Wrote Black Beauty: A Life of Anna Sewell, London: Hodder and
Stoughton.
Crouch, M. (1972) The Nesbit Tradition, the Children’s Novel in England 1945–1970, London:
Benn.
Fisher, M. (1961) Intent Upon Reading, London: Brockhampton Press.
Lean, G. (1994) ‘Horsiculture curbed to save countryside’, Independent on Sunday 3 July: 8.
Lindstam, B. (1982) ‘The horse story as love story’, Barn och Kultur 28, 1:16–20.
Moss, E. (1976) ‘On the tail of the seductive horse’, Signal 19:27–30.
Poll, B. (1961) ‘Why children like horse stories’, Elementary English 7, 38:473–474.
The Pony Club Year Book (1994) London: The British Horse Society.
Strickland, C. (1986) ‘Equine fiction in the 1980s’, School Library Journal 32, 10:36–37.
Treadgold, M. (1982) ‘For the love of horses’, Books for Your Children 17, 1:16–17.
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