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Post by darkhorse on Nov 21, 2007 13:12:11 GMT 1
I have read a couple of articles about pony books lately and it seems to be everyone always assumes that they are about girls and for girls. OK I think its probably true that it was mainly girls who read them but there were quite a few boys in pony books too. The Pullein-Thompsons sisters had a lot of boy characters, almost as many as girls. There was Henry, John and Christopher in the pony club books, there were a few boys in the Pony Patrol series, as well as The Riders on the March. Also there was Fergus in POnies in the Valley & Ponies in Peril, and the boy in Prince Among Ponies. In the Team there was Peter and Jonathon. They had quite a lot to do in the stories and I think I could identify just as well with the male characters in the books as the female ones.
But I don't think there were that many books where the main character was a boy. I can think of Alex in the Black Stallion series and David in The First Rosette series, but I can't think of any others. I would be interested to know if there are any more.
There are probably loads more but my mind has gone blank...
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Post by kunuma on Nov 21, 2007 22:02:04 GMT 1
I always remember that 'Pony for Sale', started with Martini belonging to a boy in boarding school, and there was David in the 'Three to Ride' trilogy, but on the whole I think the older books have more boys, I have one somewhere - or even two - about boys starting their own riding stables. Probably because of the whole cowboy macho image, it seems to be much more acceptable to be a horsey boy in America, (well at least in the older books there too). 'Flicka/ Thunderhead' series, and of course - not sure if they count as pony books, but I count them ;D) Champion the Wonder horse!!!!! PS I know Fury wasn't a book but if anyone wants to start a thread about horses on the screen.....................
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Post by Claire on Nov 22, 2007 13:41:46 GMT 1
Have just finished reading Timber by Judith Berrisford. The main character in that is a boy. Also like Alec in the Black Stallion books there was also a boy in the island stallion ones (steve?) also by Walter Farley. Will put my thinking cap on see if I can come up with some more.
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Post by Claire on Nov 22, 2007 13:47:08 GMT 1
PS I know Fury wasn't a book but if anyone wants to start a thread about horses on the screen..................... There was a book called "Fury" by H.M.Peel. Actually I was thinking of starting a category for horse films and TV shows. Might do it now before I forget.
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Post by exmoorfan on Nov 23, 2007 0:17:54 GMT 1
The White colt by David Rook...There was a film which starred Mark Lester as the boy also..
Gosh claire you read quickly.! Did you like Timber.?
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Post by exmoorfan on Nov 23, 2007 22:06:05 GMT 1
I am reading Bonney the pony by Ruth Clarke.. It is about an Exmoor pony..His master is a boy named Ken..
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Post by haffyfan on Nov 23, 2007 22:13:38 GMT 1
Hi Exmoorfan...is that the film where the pony gets stuck in a bog?
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Post by garej on Nov 23, 2007 22:18:14 GMT 1
Showjumping Secret by Josephine Pullein-Thompson is about a boy and his horse.
Patrick's Pony, also by Josephine is another where the main character was male, as obvious from the title.
The Woodbury Pony Club series; Pony Club Cup, Pony Club Challenge and Pony Club Trek has a few males in the Woodbury Pony Club too.
The Moors series has quite a few male characters too.
Diana Pullein-Thompson has a few male characters. In "A Pony For Sale" the pony in the story is first ridden by a boy. "The Hermit's Horse" has 2 male main character: the hermit and the boy who befriends him.
The pony seekers series: The Pony Seekers, A Foal for Candy and A Pony Found has one of the main characters a boy too.
Not technically a pony story, but Diana's "The Boy and The Donkey" (later republished as "The Donkey Race") is about a boy's relationship with the rag and bone man's donkey.
Christine's Phantom Horse series has quite a few male characters (particularly the first 2 books).
The Jackie book "Jackie and the Pony Boys" is about 3 boys who are staying next door to where Jackie and Pam are staying.
The following books by Eleanor Helme have quite a few male characters: Suitable Owner's, Shank's Pony and White Winter.
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Post by darkhorse on Nov 24, 2007 20:00:45 GMT 1
Thanks for the list! I had fogotten all about Showjumping Secret and the Donkey one. I haven't read Patrick's pony but obviously from the title it is about a boy so I don't know why I didnt think of it I quite like reading the books with boys as central characters but I can't help feeling they are not very true to life. I remember back to the days...a long time ago lol... when I was young and most of the teenage boys I knew were quite frankly awful! Maybe they were nicer in the 1950s and 60s...
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Post by exmoorfan on Nov 24, 2007 21:43:39 GMT 1
Hi Haffyfan, Yes it is. It is based on Dartmoor ..The boy cannot speak and befriends a colt which transforms his life...I won't spoil it by going on..I have a book for sale if anyone would like it..
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Post by exmoorfan on Nov 24, 2007 21:45:39 GMT 1
Having just read garej 's post it jogged my memory of Dan's secret pony...A boy and his pony..Nice little read..
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Post by Claire on Nov 24, 2007 22:20:48 GMT 1
Gosh claire you read quickly.! Did you like Timber.? Hi exmoorfan I do read very quickly. I have already read 3 books and am half way thru another since Timber! I read too quickly really as I'm always looking for something else to read. Yes, I did quite like Timber. Not outstanding but quite a nice little story. Although the boy in the story was a perhaps a bit soppy. Funny how these people are always given horses isn't it? Wish someone would give me a horse! oh BTW who wrote Dan's Secret Pony - don't think Ive read it? Looking garej's list and thinking of all the P-T books I have read I think they do have a lot more boy characters than most other pony book writers. Both the riding school series (Empty Field etc and Riders on the March and its sequel) also have a lot of prominent male characters. In these books theres not really one main hero/heroine but the boys are emphasised as much as the girl characters. (But as darkhorse said the boys are all nicer than real life ones!)
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Post by exmoorfan on Nov 25, 2007 0:18:15 GMT 1
Hi Claire, Glad you liked Timber..,,
Dan's Secret Pony is by Helen Muir.. I quite liked this book as different.. He had a difficult childhood but loved ponies .
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Post by haffyfan on Nov 25, 2007 10:14:49 GMT 1
Hi Exmoor fan, Thanks...the video is at my mums then..if she hasn't thrown it that is...always made me cry when he got stuck! Not sure if I ever watched it past that point.
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Post by Claire on Nov 26, 2007 12:18:58 GMT 1
Hi I watched that film too a while back. He had a pet kestrel or hawk too didnt he. It was a sad film but I think it may have had a happy ending?? Cant remember! But back to the boys in pony books. Dorian Williams wrote a couple of books with male central characters called Kingdom for a Horse and Pancho. Actually they were men, not boys, which I suppose is even rarer. Are there any others at all with adult men as the main character?
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Post by exmoorfan on Nov 26, 2007 21:00:20 GMT 1
Hi, yes that the one..He did have a kestral too.. Yes i think the ending was good..
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Post by kunuma on Nov 26, 2007 21:27:34 GMT 1
The White Pony film was made near here, I was not happy about the film because the hawk died in the film, and I was not at all happy about the way the ponies acting in the film were treated, I think the producers had the Hound of the Baskervilles on the brain! I have been looking for my book about the boy who started the riding school, I think it was called Bracken House or something similiar.
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Post by kunuma on Nov 27, 2007 21:25:07 GMT 1
Found it - 'Bracken Horse' by Gareth Dale. The Mary Elwyn Patchett Brumby series and my favourite boy and horse book, 'Snow Cloud Stallion' by Gerald Raftery. That is all I can think of, strange, I had to really search my memory to think of the names of the male characters even if they were the lead ones, but I can reel off my favourite female characters, not sure whether that is due to the way they are written, or whether I am so sexist that I only identify with the female ones!!
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Post by susanb on Dec 6, 2007 16:04:56 GMT 1
You're right that there are a lot more American books that feature boys, but one UK title is Carolyn Akrill's Flying Changes (dressage).
On the American book front, Jessie Haas' Working Trot is again about a young man training for dressage, as are the pair of books by Patrick Lawson (pen name of Lois Eby) called The Star Crossed Stallion and The Star Crossed Stallion's Big Chance.
A quartet of books by John Richard Young about Don Revere and his Arabian stallion Raffy begin as cattle ranch/western discipline, but the last book in the series has Don (now in college) training Raffy and his Throughbred mare Clonmella for the Olympic three day event. The books are Arabian Cow Horse, Arabian Cutting Horse, Champion of the Cross 5 and Olympic Horseman
Rutherford Montgomery (a Newberry Award winning author) wrote the Golden Stallion series, which was set on a western ranch...think Flicka, if Ken was older and less wet.
Marjorie Reynolds wrote a number of books, some featured girls, some boys....Dark Horse Barnaby has a boy training young horse he has inherited from his grandfather for hurdle/steeplechase racing, though family conflict is the primary focus of the book. A Horse Called Mystery and the Cabin on Ghostly Pond are both mystery and horse. Reynolds' work is all English discipline, no western stock horses here!
Back in the West, Albert G. Miller wrote three books about a boy and a horse on a ranch setting...Fury of Broken Wheel Ranch, Fury and the White Mare, Fury and the Mustangs. There was a tv series based on the books in the 50s, and then a couple of books by another author based on the tv series (how is that for convoluted?)
Hmm...I'm sure there are more, but I'll have to check the shelves!
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Post by kunuma on Dec 7, 2007 20:06:01 GMT 1
think Flicka, if Ken was older and less wet. ;D ;D ;D Love it - that is so much what I thought he was in Green Grass!! Almost preferred Howard! Back in the West, Albert G. Miller wrote three books about a boy and a horse on a ranch setting...Fury of Broken Wheel Ranch, Fury and the White Mare, Fury and the Mustangs. There was a tv series based on the books in the 50s, and then a couple of books by another author based on the tv series (how is that for convoluted?) OK now officially confused, didn't know that there were Fury books, (not sure whether I should be thrilled with susanb for telling me, or wish I didn't know as I am now trying to buy them from Canada, and I wasn't going to buy any more books!!) BUT which came first??? Albert Miller seems to have 'written' a lot of the film stories for Disney, orwas it vice versa,? Was he a real person or was it part of the merchandising for the films? I have only ever managed to find three very poor quality b and w episodes of Fury, but one is the one with the white mare (actually it was a gelding - but one wasn't supposed to notice that!) Did he write the stories for TV, or put the episodes in books? (The Champion books were a spin off from the TV series weren't they, the stories not from the show though.) Hmm...I'm sure there are more, but I'll have to check the shelves!
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Post by kunuma on Dec 7, 2007 20:08:02 GMT 1
Oooooops sorry folks, still can't get the hang of this quote thing, perhaps I should stop trying before I get had up for perjury!
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Post by susanb on Dec 8, 2007 5:11:29 GMT 1
Hi Kunuma!
:-) suffer! Hey, misery loves company, and it's these boards that keep giving me new British authors to hunt for, and the dollar is less than two to one against the pound now (arrggh!).
Re the Fury books...they came before the tv series, which I don't believe Miller had any hand in writing (and you're one up on me there, I've never seen an episode). Miller didn't write any of the books that were based on the series that was based on his books (whew...what a sentence!).
The tv books came from Whitman Publishing, which did virtually every movie/tv tie in book from Shirley Temple to the Partridge Family, by way of Hawaii Five-O, and of course Fury. The Whitman books were written by a variety of ghost writers, and are generally terrible, with a very few exceptions, and the Fury books weren't exceptions.
There were only the three books by Miller himself: Fury, Stallion of Broken Wheel Ranch was first, next came Fury and the Mustangs and last was Fury and the White Mare. They all came out in Grosset & Dunlap picture cover editions...exactly the same format as a Nancy Drew picture cover...so very slightly taller than say a Collins Pony Library picture cover (but with good quality, non-tanned paper). You should be able to find them very inexpensively.....just find someone who will ship for less than an arm and a leg! Also, I'd advise you to check US dealers first on that score....those poor Canadians are being ROBBED by their post office! They had a rate increase about a year ago...I dealt with one book dealer there who was close to the border and was driving into the US to do all his shipping...even his shipping TO Canada, because it was so much cheaper.
One other Fury note, Grosset & Dunlap did do an abridged (by Alice Thorne) picture book size version of Fury of Broken Wheel Ranch...just called Fury....the artwork in it is super, by Everett Raymond Kinstler, whose has been official portrait painter of several US Presidents (which hang in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C.) Profusely illustrated with number of color plates as well as black and white....again, this is one that can be had very inexpensively....$5 or so.....
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Post by haffyfan on Dec 30, 2007 14:55:10 GMT 1
I have just read Dark Champion by Arthur Waterford (or something on those lines) the central charcters are a brother and sister and all the other significant charcters, bar the mother, are also male.
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Post by Claire on Dec 30, 2007 17:59:58 GMT 1
Hi haffyfan, what was Dark Champion like? Would you recommend it? Seen it on ebay, debating whether to buy it or not.
Shouldn't be on here really got guests coming soon, havent even brushed my hair or hoovered yet. What a slob!
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Post by haffyfan on Dec 30, 2007 18:23:31 GMT 1
It was really good to begin with and is about a horse Connemara Jim, who to all intents and purposes is really a rescue case, then it goes almost off track of being a pony story due to the happenings and what is almost a second story line appears and then both storylines merge together...although it's somewhat far fetched....I don't want to give too much away in case it spoils it but will do a blog on it when I can be bothered.
If's it's not mega bucks i'd say buy it as it's well written and enjoyable.
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