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Original poster

An impossible task: find the novel about a wild horse...

32 replies

AllQuietOnThePippisFront · 12/06/2011 15:45

... that I read non-stop when I was 12ish (I think).

I do not remember the title nor the name of the horse nor anything except it was about a pack of wild horses with particualr focus on one. Something like Spirit but without all that adventure.

Go on give me ideas, if nothing else I'll discover some new ones for my children.

Ah, I was 12 in 1986.

TIA

OP posts:
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Bloodybridget · 17/06/2011 13:50

There's an online bookseller who specialises in pony books; she might be able to help.

Original poster
AllQuietOnThePippisFront · 16/06/2011 17:33

wow, thank you for all the suggestions. I will have a look at them one by one and see if I can find it. The fact that I grew up in Italy doesn't help... cannot even recognise the book cover Sad! Do not panic: I am sure the authour was from an english speaking country!

OP posts:
jenpp · 16/06/2011 16:18

I loved Moorland Mousie, would have to be second-hand I would think.

Abra1d · 14/06/2011 21:44

SLight deviation here but it is about pony/horse books...

Fidra Books have republished JILL'S GYMKHANA by Ruby Ferguson. It has a lovely black pony cantering across the field on the cover. A few slight modernisations, but nothing that would bother a Jill fan. I bought it for my daughter. OK, lie of the month: I bought it for me, as I'd lost my old copy from when I was ten and you need to have these books with you.

If you have daughters Jill is a great role model: feisty, self-reliant, ingenious and kind.

christina1977 · 14/06/2011 21:41

i can recommend beetroot books for upbeat, postively focused childrens books

www.beetrootbooks.com/product/5151/39/magic-faraway-tree

givemushypeasachance · 14/06/2011 12:34

Oh how I loved the Black Station books - all of them, with the son called Satan and the filly Black Minx. I wanted to live in New York and have racehorses that lived with old Napoleon in the stable around the corner, and race them and have glorious adventures!

DeWe · 14/06/2011 12:24

It's not any of the Monica Edwards books. Love them, got them all. GGBP is republishing them. Hopefully going to visit Romney Marsh this summer to see if we can view the places. (Along with Malcolm Saville stories too)

HarrietSchulenberg · 12/06/2011 20:03

I'm going to have to go an re-read the Jinny books. They're upstairs.

HarrietSchulenberg · 12/06/2011 20:02

If I was Mrs Manders I'd have been more than a little concerned about some hippy teenager wandering off over the moors all day with my pubescent daughter! Though not as worried as I'd have been about her spending half her life on (and off) a bolting horse! She seemed rather pre-occupied with decorating their mausoleum of a house, if I remember rightly.

Actually, I had a hot spot for Ken - I wanted him to be my brother!

fuckmepinkandcallmerosie · 12/06/2011 19:11

Was it Spirit, Stallion of the Cimmaron?

Southwestwhippet · 12/06/2011 19:09

Was about to say almost certainly either the Mary Elwyn Patchett Brumby books or the Elaine Mitchell ones.

The Elaine Mitchell brumby was called Throwa. don't think the Mary Elwyn Patchett brumbies had names.

The business in the Jinny books with Ken is really wierd and never properly explained. I also have always wondered if the author Patricia Leitch is the same Patricia Leitch who wrote Cross Country Pony and various other 'lighter' more traditional pony books. Very different style but seems unlikely there would be two pony authors with the same name.???

SuePurblybilt · 12/06/2011 19:01

Oh, love Monica Edwards, seeker (and Monica Dickens as it happens Grin)

SuePurblybilt · 12/06/2011 19:00

I re-read a Jinny book recently and didn't like it at all. Loads of moralising about why she should let various poor children ride Shantih and agonising about decisions. Weirdy subtext about her social worker father and his helper. I missed all that before, I was so enthralled at the idea of riding highland ponies to school and having a bedroom covered in pictures of horses.

FrozenChocolate · 12/06/2011 18:38

Jinny at finmory was fabulous!!!

bruffin · 12/06/2011 18:24

I have found the other Brumby books, they are by Mary Elwyn Patchett

seeker · 12/06/2011 18:23

I was going to say Silver Brumby or Thunderhead.

ANy Monica Edwards fans on here?

roisin · 12/06/2011 18:19

this was the copy I had

roisin · 12/06/2011 18:18

Snowcloud Stallion

I loved this as a child.

bruffin · 12/06/2011 18:03

I am sure there were two different authors writing books about brumbies. There was Elaine Mitchell who wrote Silver Brumby but there were another set of books by an author nearer the end of the alpahbet. I have a picture in my mind of my library nearly 40 years ago and can picture where they were but not who the author was.

BelfastBloke · 12/06/2011 16:11

If it wasn't the Silver Brumby series it bloody well should have been.

Original poster
AllQuietOnThePippisFront · 12/06/2011 15:58

Oh thanks! Smile

belfast bloke, no not the black stallion, although I obsessed about the film.

let me have a look at those.

My fear of libraries was born then, when, after taking this book out so many times, it disappeared and I never saw it again. Here I am 23 years later wondering what it was.

OP posts:
GreenTeapot · 12/06/2011 15:57

I know, those books were amazing. Although my experience of chestnut Arab mares is that they're all stroppy bags Grin

Strumpypumpy · 12/06/2011 15:56

Monica Dickens?

HarrietSchulenberg · 12/06/2011 15:55

Oh gosh, the Shantih books! I desperately wanted my folks to up sticks and move to Scotland so I could be like Jinny Manders. Every time we went on holiday up there I hoped that they would announce we were staying for ever and not going back home so I could have a chestnut Arab and ride to school.

BelfastBloke · 12/06/2011 15:54

It's probably not The Black Stallion series, about a wild desert Arabian horse which ends up racing in New York:

but there was a spin-off to that series about a red stallion called Flame who lived on an island.