Out of the Gate: Wild Girl by Patricia Reilly Giff

In the distance, between his yelling and the horn blaring, Tio Paolo sounded desperate. "Hurry," I told [my horse] Cavallo.

Suddenly I was feeling that desperation, too. We had to drive all the way to Sao Paolo to catch the plane. But I was determined. Five minutes, no more.

Up ahead was the curved white fence that surrounded the lemon grove. The overhanging branches were old and gnarled, and the lemons still green.

Pai, my father, had held me up the day he'd left. His hair was dark, his teeth straight and white. "Pick a lemon for me, Lidie. I'll take it to America."

"When I send for you, you'll bring me another," he said.

But her father has forgotten the lemon, forgotten the meaning of that promise, and when Lidie offers him the still green fruit she has carried in her pocket all the way from Brazil, he doesn't understand its significance. Her big brother Rafael has decorated her new bedroom in baby pink with Disney figures, and Lidie finds the five years away from her father and brother too great a gulf to reach across. The taciturn men talk little and then only of their work training the racehorses that her father oversees. After the years since her mother's death, years of dreaming of being with her father, Lidie finds herself longing for the cheery bustle back in her aunt and uncle's sunlit house. There, praised by her uncle Paolo as "a natural rider," Lidie is saddened to be consigned by her father to "learning to ride" on a broken-down school horse too old to gallop.

But then a new horse arrives at the training barn, a young, beautiful gray, named Wild Girl, Lidie's mother's affectionate name for her, in whose fearful but lonely eyes Lidie sees herself, her own longing. As she gentles the terrified newcomer, Lidie begins to feel at home in her own skin and in her new place. Finally, she finds the courage to ride the filly in a joyful dash across the fields before her father's eyes, and he begins to see her, not as the little girl he left behind, but as the person she now is. And then her father tells how Wild Girl came to be there.

"About the horse," he said. "About Wild Girl. When I heard her name, when I heard she was for sale, I couldn't resist." He shook his head. "It's what Mamae called you."

I looked at him now, this stern man whose face I suddenly recognized, my father, who had laughed as he held me up to the tree in the lemon grove.

Now the lemon seemed so unimportant, that he hadn't remembered it. But, ah, Wild Girl.

No one gets inside the head of a character and reveals it to the reader better than Newbery winner Patricia Reilly Giff, and in her latest Wild Girl (Wendy Lamb Books, 2009), as she did so well in Pictures of Hollis Woods and Nory Ryan's Song, Giff knows how to bring the immigrant, the lonely outsider, forward and reveal the resilience and strength of her characters with striking clarity.

Horse Time: Fear of Falling by Laurie Halse Anderson

This is totally weird. How come they're not getting on my case? How come Dad's not telling me how badly I messed up?

And then I hear the strangest thing. Dad is apologizing--apologizing to me. "God, I'm so sorry, David," he says. "It's all my fault."

I blink, suddenly feeling dizzy. "Your fault? But--"

"I was stupid," he says harshly. "I pushed you too hard, too fast. You never would have tried that jump in a million years if I hadn't pushed you to do it. I--I just wanted--" he holds out his hands helplessly. "I'm sorry." He turns to Mom. "I'm so, so sorry."

David loves horses and riding. He desperately wants to learn to jump, hoping to please his estranged father whose chance to compete as an Olympian was ended in the boycott of the 1980 games. But David is haunted by a recurring nightmare in which his horse refuses a jump and he has a disastrous fall.

When his father, who has been absent and uncommunicative for over a year, suddenly reappears at the barn with a expensive jumper, King's Shadow, David is both elated and fearful--eager to show off his beginning skills but afraid that he will never equal his father's expectations. Quinn, his riding teacher, advocates a go-slow technique, what he calls "horse time," allowing both the rider and horse to learn at a comfortable pace, but David's father urges him to try an advanced jump which causes a bad fall with potentially severe injuries.

And then David learns that his father's return to Pennsylvania stems not from a desire to be with his family, but a desperate attempt to obtain a job with a local friend's help. David realizes that the money his dad should have sent for child support has gone into the purchase of a pricey jumper, and his conflict only grows when he sees his father force his unwilling mount into a difficult jump which causes the horse an injury as well.

Torn and confused by his father's behavior, David resolves to give up jumping and confesses his decision to Quinn:

"I don't want to be anything like him. I'm even thinking about giving up jumping. Who needs it? It's just for show, anyway."

"Well," Mr. Quinn says, gazing at Trickster rather than me. "I hope you won't do that, David. As much as you may not want to hear it, you do have your father's gift with horses. Only you have an advantage."

"We can't help being like our parents in some ways," Mr. Quinn says. "But you just showed that you're different from your father. You've got a lot of respect for these animals, David. You've also got good intuition--when you stop and listen to it."

In her new edition of Fear of Falling #9 (Vet Volunteers) (Puffin, 2009) Newbery author Laurie Halse Anderson continues her popular Vet Volunteers series with the continuing story of David Hutchinson, first featured in Trickster #3 (Vet Volunteers). (See my review here.) As in the other titles in this notable series, the young protagonist has solid support from adults like Quinn and veterinarian Dr. Mac, as well as his young friends who volunteer regularly at her animal clinic, as they work their way through the middle school years--on, as Quinn puts it, the slow but steady pace of "horse time."

Paddock of Dreams: The Truth about Horses, Friends, & My Life as a Coward by Sarah P. Gibson

So, you think you love horses? Loads of people say they do, especially to me. Usually, though, it's new girls at school. When they find out my family owns horses, they sit next to me at lunch and try to be nice. They munch away on their sandwiches, looking all dreamy-eyed.

"So, Sophie"--one will begin by stating the obvious--"you have horses."

I nod and keep eating.

"How many?" she will persist, and I know that even though she's sitting right beside me, she's actually far away--riding a galloping horse, usually pure white, across a field of waving grass.

It's time to snap her out of the spell. "Two and a half," I answer.

"Oh--a pony! Is it a small one? The kind you can drive around in a cart?" she gushes.

"Well..." I hesitate. "We used to drive her around in a cart," I admit.

Now here is where I usually tell the story of Heidi and the Pony Cart.

The story of "Heidi and the Pony Cart (Or, How Not to Make Friends)" ends badly, with a runaway pony, Really (short for, the family learns too late, Really Mean,) racing across the countryside until at last too winded to run, she stops momentarily and Sophie and Heidi bail headfirst out of the cart, only to see it disappear in another wild circuit of the area.

After Gramp fetched us home, my mother offered Heidi ice cream, petting the new kittens, and even going sailing, but Heidi stayed quiet. She didn't blink a lot, either, as I recall. We never played together again.

Really is no prize as a saddle pony either. Anyone foolish enough to climb upon her back gets bitten, bucked off, or scraped off on the nearest fence. If these capers fail to dislodge the determined would-be rider, Really just drops to the ground and attempts to roll over on the brave equestrienne. Sophie is no fool; she refuses even to try to ride Really, but then Melissa Maloney moves onto the island and seems determined both to be Sophie's friend and ride her pony.

"Look, Melissa," I confessed, "they forgot to tell us the second part of this pony's name when we bought her. Honestly, she is Really Mean, and the truth is, no one rides her."

"Oh, yeah?" Melissa pondered this for a while. "Well, could I try to ride her?"

And with that doughty statement, Melissa's and Sophie's career as daring riders of dangerous, dumb, and downright disturbing horses begins. Really pulls all of her tricks--wheeling around to bite Melissa's legs, slamming her legs into the paddock fence, bucking her off into the manure pile, and finally doing her famous stop, drop, and roll maneuver. Battered but not broken, Melissa gets up and gets back on nine times.

"Geez, Louise!" Melissa said, gasping for air. "That is one REALLY MEAN pony!"

I hopped down from my perch on the fence and faced Melissa. "You're all right, Melissa Maloney," I said.

But Sophie's optimistic mother is not easily dissuaded from her dream of equestrienne daughters, and believing that they only need to find the right horse, goes on to buy two more--Sweetheart, who is a real sweetheart in the paddock but once outside tries to swipe riders off on every tree limb, and Fancy, a monster eighteen-hand cowhorse who is dumb as a rock and as big as Gibraltar.

Sophie tries to remain determined never to mount any of these beasts, but finally, watching Lawrence of Arabia with her dad one night, even she is suddenly taken with the vision of herself galloping along the island's sands on her snow white steed, (who looks a little like Sweetheart) hair streaming behind her and the wind in her face. But getting to that point involves a lot of hilarious horsey adventures for Sophie and Melissa, not the least of which is their Halloween night attempt to round up a wild moose which they mistake in the darkness for a runaway Fancy.

The Truth About Horses, Friends, & My Life As a Coward is the perfect antidote to the sometimes sappy girl-meets-horse genre which nevertheless ends with a sort of friendly truce between Sophie and her mounts. A great story of middle school friendship and taking on your fears with self-deprecating humor and not a little courage, this one is a laugh-a-minute read which even (or perhaps especially) non-horse lovers will love.

Running Free: Paint the Wind by Pam Munoz Ryan

Newbery winner Pam Munoz Ryan (for Esperanza Rising) returns to the American West, this time the high plains, in her latest novel, Paint The Wind.

"The only way to capture a ghost is to paint the tail of the wind." Maya's violet eyes widened, her voice breathless with conviction.

With one hand, she picked up the small brown and white plastic horse and moved it in swift arcs over the chenille bedspread. The June sun eased a notch lower in the southern California sky and flooded through the west windows of the two-story house where she had lived with Grandmother. Maya made the figure prance through the shimmering air and whispered, " I am a mysterious phantom, belonging to the stars. Who will find me?"

With the other hand she chose a black stallion and swept it upward after the ghost horse. She raced the black horse forward and said, "I am riding the wind. I am coming for you."

As the novel begins with echoes of The Secret Garden, orphaned Maya lives a shuttered life with her coldly controlling and neurotically protective paternal grandmother. Forbidden to speak of her mother, whom Grandmother holds responsible for the accident which killed both her parents, Maya has only a few fleeting mental images, one photograph of her laughing mother, waving at someone from horseback, and a shoebox of her mom's toy horses, to keep her memories of her alive, and these Maya keeps hidden away from her Grandmother's sight.

But when her grandmother suddenly dies, Maya learns that she indeed does have another family, a family which Grandmother Menetti despised as "living like animals," a grandfather Walter, great uncle Frederick, and great aunt Violet Limner, who live and work a ranch seemingly in another world. In two days Maya finds herself sleeping in her mother's old bed in her room in the fascinating old ranch house filled with photos of her mother, even a duplicate of the one Maya has secretly held dear. Maya learns that she was the one her mother was waving to in her photo, and begins to feel that she has come out of a long captivity to her real home.

But too soon Maya is whisked away to the summer camp on the Sweetwater River where her Aunt Vi is doing summer research, a camp where she soon learns that she will be doing chores, riding horses, and dealing with her difficult younger cousin Payton for the season. At first lonely and fearful, Maya soon discovers that she has the Limner knack for handling horses and when her riding skills are strong enough, Aunt Vi takes her on a long ride to see the wild horses. In a small herd there, Maya sees the brown and white mare Artemesia, the once-wild mustang that her mother trained and rode before her death and who has escaped to join the stallion Sargent's harem herd.

When the government rounds up Artemesia's group in a scheduled "gather" of the wild mustangs, the mare and her foal escape, and on a day when Aunt Vi is away from camp, Maya decides to tack up and look for Artemesia and her baby on her own. When a sudden earthquake causes an avalanche which blocks the course of the Sweetwater, Maya's saddle horse flees and Maya finds herself with serious injuries, feverish and unable to walk, with no one knowing her whereabouts. Her only hope of quick rescue is to coax Artemesia to allow her to ride her across the river and back into camp.

In alternating chapters, Ryan weaves, as she says "like a braided rein," the story of Artemesia, the "ghost" horse, and the story of Maya into a gripping but poetic story of love lost and found. With the high desert's beautiful mountain ranges as a backdrop, Paint The Wind is a modern story which has the feel of old-fashioned horse classics like Misty of Chincoteague or King of the Wind: The Story of the Godolphin Arabian which will appeal to today's readers and perhaps draw them back to those shimmering, satisfying novels of C. W. Anderson, Marguerite Henry, or Walter Farley.

Vet Cadet: Trickster by Laurie Halse Anderson

Children's librarians are of two minds about series fiction. Some regard most of them as ho-hum, pedestrian little novels which have the virtue of luring the lazy or timid reader with their familiar characters and plot lines. But then there are the BIG series, Narnia by C.S. Lewis, Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, even the Misty books by Marguerite Henry, which have sustained a fictional world over many well-written sequels.

So when a Newbery Honor author like Laurie Halse Anderson (for Fever 1793) turns up with fair-sized paperback line of pet-centered stories, the hope is that the books will be well-written, with believable plots and creditable characters. Her new Vet Volunteers series meets these expectations solidly.

For example, a recent entry in this set, Trickster #3 (Vet Volunteers) offers, for a refreshing change, a boy who loves horses and riding. Volunteering at a neighborhood veterinary clinic during the summer after a not-so-great fourth-grade year, David Hutchinson is an energetic, brash, and sometimes impulsive kid who is eager to find a way to return to horseback riding, in which he excelled before his parents divorced and his dad moved far away.

We're on cleaning duty today at Dr. Mac's Place, the veterinary clinic across the street from my house. I always knew I'd end up working here. I'm close by, I'm great with animals, and people love me. It took a few years of pestering Dr. Mac, the vet, but she finally caved in.

When a nearby stable owner offers riding lessons in return for barn work by Dr. Mac's vet volunteers, David falls in love with Mr. Quinn's newest horse, a flashy quarter horse named Trickster. Trickster has a minor leg wound from a transporting accident, and David, who has been out of favor with Quinn since he got himself and his mount lost on a trail ride the year before, offers to walk Trickster twice daily until his wound heals.

Quinn reluctantly agrees to give David another chance, but when David's habit of lazy shortcuts and thoughtless actions causes a horse to run away with a novice rider and results in a serious re-injury to Trickster's leg, Quinn has no choice but to bar him from further contact with the stable's horses, especially his favorite.

Typically, David can't manage to stay away from the stable, and when he sneaks out late at night to check on Trickster, he finds Dr. Mac, Quinn, and the other hands in the middle of a mystery epidemic threatening all the horses, and David realizes that he may have a vital clue to the nature of the illness.

With a just-right mix of adventure and personal insight for the main character, this set looks to have strong appeal to the animal-absorbed elementary readers who have made Ben Baglio's British series Animal Ark so very popular. Like Baglio's novels, each features a different animal, from endangered sea mammals in Manatee Blues #4 (Vet Volunteers) to lost kittens, Homeless #2 (Vet Volunteers) Each novel features a different member of Dr. Mac's Vet Volunteers, an intelligent and diverse group of five kids brought together by their love and desire to care for animals.