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A children’s book from 1972 about a girl who acquires a loaner pony for the summer that she and her mother are staying in a cabin in the country.
I had thought this book was one I’d read as a kid where a girl discovers a valley full of wild horses, but in fact it’s one I hadn’t read and she discovers a herd of tame ponies owned by a neighbor. (Now I wish I could figure out what the “girl discovers a valley full of wild horses” book was.)
It’s got just enough realistic horse detail to feel believable and is full of the joy of ponies and exploring. There is the threat of horse death when some ponies get stolen to be sold for horse meat (!), but it’s okay, they get rescued.
One of the things I like about reading older books, especially ones that aren't considered classics of their genre, is the window into ordinary life at the time. I was born in 1973. I remember when I was 6 or 7, I used to walk to friends' houses, to candy stories, etc, by myself. These weren't long trips, maybe a couple blocks. But it was nothing unusual. All my friends did that too. This was in various parts of Los Angeles, mostly in neighborhoods that were not the greatest. I now never see unaccompanied children.
In this book, the heroine, who is about ten, rides her pony on trails around the countryside by herself, and is sometimes gone all day. Of course most girls would not have their own pony, loaner or otherwise, but I do remember that in the summer I could disappear and do my own thing all day, so long as I took a lunch and was back before dark. There's a lot of things about my childhood that were terrible but the chance to explore alone was one of the few I'm still grateful for.
The Valley of the Ponies
I had thought this book was one I’d read as a kid where a girl discovers a valley full of wild horses, but in fact it’s one I hadn’t read and she discovers a herd of tame ponies owned by a neighbor. (Now I wish I could figure out what the “girl discovers a valley full of wild horses” book was.)
It’s got just enough realistic horse detail to feel believable and is full of the joy of ponies and exploring. There is the threat of horse death when some ponies get stolen to be sold for horse meat (!), but it’s okay, they get rescued.
One of the things I like about reading older books, especially ones that aren't considered classics of their genre, is the window into ordinary life at the time. I was born in 1973. I remember when I was 6 or 7, I used to walk to friends' houses, to candy stories, etc, by myself. These weren't long trips, maybe a couple blocks. But it was nothing unusual. All my friends did that too. This was in various parts of Los Angeles, mostly in neighborhoods that were not the greatest. I now never see unaccompanied children.
In this book, the heroine, who is about ten, rides her pony on trails around the countryside by herself, and is sometimes gone all day. Of course most girls would not have their own pony, loaner or otherwise, but I do remember that in the summer I could disappear and do my own thing all day, so long as I took a lunch and was back before dark. There's a lot of things about my childhood that were terrible but the chance to explore alone was one of the few I'm still grateful for.
The Valley of the Ponies
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I also feel like I'm less, um, petrified of making my own decisions and mistakes than a lot of my age group.
(The conversation between my evil mother, who was lazy and did not want to bother monitoring my behavior in any way she didn't enjoy, and my evil pediatric psychiatrist, who felt strongly that teenagers in partial hospitalization should be kept in locked ward conditions at home, was something to behold when I was fourteen, although it's a lot funnier now than it was then.)