Favourite childhood horse books/novels

I loved the Jill books, and the Pony Club series with snotty Sarah? and they're all pretty useless until this amazing instructor comes along!
Eventers Dream was funny.
I used to get the compilations, with chapters from various books. There was one about a massively strong Welsh Cob but I can't remember the name.
 
Although they are not horsey books, I blame Enid Blyton for my pony obsession!
My granddad gave me 2 books: Children of Cherry Tree Farm & the follow up Children of Willow Farm. The children had donkeys to ride to school on! :D I begged and pleaded for years to get a donkey to go to school on, I even asked the headmaster at my village school if I could keep it in the bike shed!
 
Black Beauty.....still cry when Ginge dies...whether it be book or film! The Silver Brumby series, and Ponies Plot I laughed sooo much at that book, the idea of a piebald pony called Prune who becomes mega famous by going to the moon.....Black Stallion series, My Friend Flicka series...
 
I collect old horsey books - charity shop fiend!

I loved Fly-by-night, how I wanted a pony like woodlark!
The team series, although that isnt old, as I was able to find copies in my local library ;)

Pony club camp
A horse for the holidays

and I have one called "kit & fiesta of something" :)

Also love enid bylton, Cherry tree farm was a fave, and I have the entire set of Malory towers, and all the famous 5 books! I love books :D
 
has to be National velvet and Silver brumbies as well as Black beauty and my all time fav the Godolphin arabian I hope I have spelt that right sorry if i havent!
 
This is my favourite thread ever!! :D

Ok, time for my confession!
My friend and I went to a local rescue centre open day recently, and there were loads of stalls including a book stall - with hundreds of pony books!
We both got stupidly excited (as we had recently been reminiscing about pony books) and couldn't decide which ones to buy.

So we gave them a donation, filled a box, and took the whole lot home with us!!

So now I have every P-T book, Jill series, black stallion series..... the list is endless!
 
I had the Black stallion books, also a red stallion one. I still have a book called Rosina Copper but can't remember reading it. Also does anyone remember Horse in the House, it was a kids drama about a girl whose dream palomino pony gets hit by a car and she then gets a big black horse, must have been in the 70's I think.
 
My favourite book though is Five Proud Riders, about some kids that go trekking through the New Forest, get mixed up in gypsies etc - One day I will get to ride my own horse in the New Forest.....
 
AArrrhhhh, i loved all the jill books and still have them,

also Folly foot farm, but my best book is..

Little black a pony its a lovely story with great pics..:D:D

does anyone remember it....
 
"I gazed in wonder at the view. Suddenly I saw something moving at great speed below us. It was a horse galloping riderless and alone. He moved beautifully and with tremendous grace. His tail streamed behind him like a pennant. He looked like something out of another world. It was the wild Palomino....."

Phantom Horse - Christine Pullein-Thompson

Hands up who wanted a palomino pony after reading this book?? :D
 
If you want to be reminded of what was out there in terms of pony books, go to the website of Jane Badger Books. She is a specialist pony book dealer and I believe is currently writing a book on pony books. You can spend a happy half hour reminiscing. I collect children's pony books and have done really since I was a child myself. I now have literally thousands. My first one was Jill's Gymkhana and it's been all downhill from there, really! I used to be able to pick them up very cheaply indeed, often for 10 or 20 pence, but I fear those days are long gone and prices have escalated as they have become genuine "collector's items". I can and do still pick up bargains and feel stupidly pleased when I do. If you had enough money, you could go round just buying them up, but a lot of the fun is making a find. I have moved on to collecting more modern ones now as well, such as Sheltie and Saddle Club, but for me they just don't have the same charm as the old ones. Perhaps it's because that's what I was brought up with and younger readers will find the old ones boring and dated. The drawings in the older ones are wonderful, too.
 
Wow, this is a blast from the past! I absolutely loved the Jinny and Shantih books, I read and re-read them, and got completely lost in the story every time! Also loved My Friend Flicka, oh, and Fly-by-night...aaah, happy times, reading this brings it all right back!
 
Doncella said:
I have never heard of this book can you tell me more?
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In a nut shell;

A girl and her family move into a massive leaky falling down house in a new area. (Her father is something eccentric) They are quite poor and she doesn't have a pony but can ride. she goes to a PC rally and someone falls off and won't get back on so she ends up riding the pony. A strange old man is watching and is so impressed that he asks her to come and school the show pony he has.

She does this and eventually they qualify it for HOYS but he dies just before they're set to go. She scrapes together money to hire a lorry and takes it anyway and it is supreme champion (by this point she is getting stick from the old man's family as they want the grandchild? to ride the pony)

Turns out he had left her the pony in his will but she has to sell it as she can't keep it due to her family moving on again, no money etc. It goes to America and she ends up in a bedroom pony less somewhere in a city.

There is a lot more going on than I have dealt with I think. I read it as a teenager and I loved it :)
 
jpj said:
All the above, plus the Tamsin and Rissa series,. especially "Wish for a Pony" Oh yes and the Punchbowl farm series, all by Monica Edwards.
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ditto this.

I now have a full collection of the Punchbowl series and the Romney Marsh series.

Although in the books it's TamZin not Tamsin.

Hence my daughters are called Tamsin (I forgot it was spelt with a Z) and Marissa (Rissa) (Clarissa in the books). !
 
woodtiger said:
There was the riding school owner who had the super hunter called Blue Cloud? or Blue something,
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Mrs Darcy!! Who said everything with an exclamation mark! and the horse was called Blue Smoke IIRC

cuppatea said:
are the jill book about a girl who lives with her mother only and gets given a (piebald?) pony who she keeps in the garden in the shed and learns to ride Wearing her school mac while the local (snobby) riding school go past?
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Yes, only she buys the pony (either called Black Boy or Danny Boy depending on which "era" you bought the books - and apparently he changes from piebald to black) they had an orchard and a field, and the shed turned out to be a stable. :D

I still have all the Jill books and re-read them after a similar book thread last year!

I also loved Dream of Fair Horses I dunno if I still have my copy or not, and I'd another one by Patricia Leitch called Jump to the Top about a girl who acquires a pony that she ends up riding at HOYS in the Junior Jumper of the year

I had a compilation of pony stories books that had a story in it that I think was by one of the Pullein Thomson's about some kids taking a short cut across a haunted bridge and meeting the ghost - which scared the pants off me!!
 
Loved all the Jill books
Misty of Chincoteague
All Pullein Thompson
Also Pat Smythe series about the Three Jays.
Green Grass of Wyoming - I think there was even a kiss in there - terribly adult when you're about 11.
 
Loved the Jinny books! Was only just thinking about them the other day and ordered a set of the first 4 books from eBay, (4quid delivered!) can't wait for them to get here. :D

Also loved the black stallion books, I love that image of galloping along the beach bareback, on a huge black stallion, mane flying!
 
jesstickle said:
In a nut shell;

A girl and her family move into a massive leaky falling down house in a new area. (Her father is something eccentric) They are quite poor and she doesn't have a pony but can ride. she goes to a PC rally and someone falls off and won't get back on so she ends up riding the pony. A strange old man is watching and is so impressed that he asks her to come and school the show pony he has.

She does this and eventually they qualify it for HOYS but he dies just before they're set to go. She scrapes together money to hire a lorry and takes it anyway and it is supreme champion (by this point she is getting stick from the old man's family as they want the grandchild? to ride the pony)

Turns out he had left her the pony in his will but she has to sell it as she can't keep it due to her family moving on again, no money etc. It goes to America and she ends up in a bedroom pony less somewhere in a city.

There is a lot more going on than I have dealt with I think. I read it as a teenager and I loved it :)
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Thanks, sounds a bit close to home does that one.
 
sunshine19 said:
As a follow on from Famous showjumpers of times gone by... I got all nostalgic.

My favourite book from my childhood was A Horse Called September by Anne Digby. Does anyone remember it?
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Yes I still have this book, haven't seen it for years though, its in the loft with all the others.

mocha911 said:
AArrrhhhh, i loved all the jill books and still have them,

also Folly foot farm, but my best book is..

Little black a pony its a lovely story with great pics..:D:D

does anyone remember it....
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I remember Little Black, a Pony I used to read it over and over when I was in junior school. The pictures were good. Walter Farley must have had a thing about black horses!

I loved the Pullein-Thompson sisters (Mystery at Black Pony Inn was great), Ruby Ferguson, Patricia Leitch, Monica Dickens and numerous other pony authors. I still have most of the books but I need to have a look at them to get their individual titles, I have to say my favourite is the Eventers Dream series by Caroline Akril.
 
Practically all of the above still have 3 - 400 old pony books and still collect them.

Favourites
Black Beauty - All time fave have several copies including the original abridged copy my mum used to read to me every night when I was about 5.
Black Stallion - always thought I would have one now! : D
Loved Six Ponies I think by Josephine Pullein-Thompson where a group of Pony Clubbers each were given a young horse to break and bring on. There was the posh girl called June I think who was a "pot-hunter" with a pony called Golden Wonder but it was the lowly Noel who finally came up trumps.

Happy memories :)
 
All of these- I still have some of the originals! Plus one by Lucy Rees called 'Wild Pony', and a sort of spin off of Black Beauty that I think the Pullein sisters wrote, I think they made up a Black Beauty family tree and wrote about all his cousins!
 
Going back to Lobelia Overhill's post on the Jill books, the pony didn't change from piebald to black, it was the other way round. He was originally black and hence called Black Boy, who Jill was growing out of and she then eventually ended up with Rapide as well, hence Jill Has Two Ponies. I somewhat cynically think the PC brigade got hold of this and he had to be changed to a piebald called Danny Boy! He may have reverted again, I think. At the time, I know I didn't think there was anything odd or untoward about a black pony being given the rather obvious name of Black Boy; well, actually, I didn't think anything about it at all, it was just his name!

The same happened with National Velvet. The horse in the book is a piebald called The Pie -very imaginative - though a bit of a giveaway as not being a racehorse as such in the Grand National, I would have thought! In the film, the horse is solid coloured. Not such fun.

And isn't it always the vicarage kids who have to share two ponies between five of them, or the quiet unassuming girl who no-one's noticed, or the one with the cheap pony rescued from auction who carries the day and wins through and not the pot hunters? I can remember one book (the name escapes me, you get like that with age) where our heroine finds a pony at a sale and doesn't have quite enough money to buy it, so she has to pawn/sell her coat to get the extra money. The pawnbroker is impressed by the "good quality buttons" if I remember correctly. At the time that seemed quite logical to me - can you imagine us trying to sell off our Primark clothes to buy a pony now! Not even sure a designer coat would hack it.
 
sussexbythesea said:
Practically all of the above still have 3 - 400 old pony books and still collect them.

Favourites
Black Beauty - All time fave have several copies including the original abridged copy my mum used to read to me every night when I was about 5.
Black Stallion - always thought I would have one now! : D
Loved Six Ponies I think by Josephine Pullein-Thompson where a group of Pony Clubbers each were given a young horse to break and bring on. There was the posh girl called June I think who was a "pot-hunter" with a pony called Golden Wonder but it was the lowly Noel who finally came up trumps.

Happy memories :)
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See my earlier thread, this is part of the Radney Riding Club stories, Noel won the grey mare in a raffle and she was very progressive in her training methods, no gadgets, no rapping and bring on slowly. There was also a really grumpy dishonest horse called Oscar whose owner got to ride Trappist in the Riding Club team.
 
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