The Wonderful Ice Cream Cart (1955)

The Wonderful Ice Cream Cart
Alice Rogers Hager, il. Mimi Korach
1955, The Macmillan Company

Jerry peered through the doorway and rubbed his eyes.  He had never seen anything like this in America.  Drawn up in grand style in front of the shop was a small, sturdy white horse with tassels on his feet and a coat which shone like satin.  Behind the horse was a cream-colored cart, with a cream-colored roof.  All over the car were paintings of fruit and flowers.  A gay, decorated panel ran around the lower edge of the roof and underneath, in the exact center of the ceiling, hung a crystal chandelier, its prisms chiming in the breeze.

I must say, I’ve never seen anything like this in America, either.  I’ve seen carriage horses wearing Phillies caps, and riding horses wearing fly masks, but never a horse pulling anything which featured a chandelier.

American kid Jerry Tuck meets Belgian kid Jean Pierre Auriol in Brussels, where the Tucks have relocated for a year in the 1950s.  Jerry knows little French, is financially secure and has a father; Jean Pierre knows little English, is struggling to help his mother make their shabby flower shop pay, and his father has been missing since the end of the war.  They get along beautifully, though, and Jerry agreeably falls in with Jean Pierre’s friendship with Papa Goncourt, an ice cream vendor, and his horse Bobo.  The two boys help Papa and Bobo find a new sales line for the winter months and a snug new home when he falls ill.  Their attentions are rewarded with a vacation in the Ardennes.  Bobo, of course, takes them there:

The church bells were ringing as they drove steadily out the long avenue and tiny, pale green leaves curled their fingers around the limbs of the chestnut trees.  The chandelier tinkled a faint, elfin tune in time to the click of Bobo’s heels, and Jerry suddenly knew he would rather be taking this trip than anything he had ever done in his life.

They visit Jean Pierre’s uncle, a monk working at a convalescent hospital for veterans of the war, and Jerry hears the very old legend of the magical horse Bayard for the first time.  The boys go riding in the woods –

… Jean Pierre guided Bobo through the gate and across the highway, turning him into a faint trail which wound upward into the forest.  The sun filtered through the pine trees, dappling the forest floor with golden pennies.  All around them was deep, fragrant silence.

- where they come across a mentally unbalanced resident of the hospital teetering on a cliff.  They rescue him, and return to Brussels as heroes.  But something nags at Jerry, and he eventually tells his parents he suspects that the man they rescued is Jean Pierre’s father.

There are more adventures, a contest, a parade, and a homecoming.  And the final line belongs to the little white carthorse, which seems fitting.

The primary attraction of the book, and its strongest point, is the uniqueness of the setting and background.  The boys’ adventures are rooted in the horrors of war, but while the effects of WWII are all around, there are few direct comments on it.  The emphasis is much more on the ancient past - the legend of Bayard, the walled farm in the Ardennes – and the present of two boys being pals.  The writing isn’t very interesting, and the action has a curious way of both lagging and leapfrogging.  A chapter will pass slowly, and then the next chapter is suddenly some unspecified time in the future.  You get the sense of an author not entirely in control of her plot, or not entirely convinced of its interest.

Links
Author- Syracuse University Library – papers
Author - Notes about her aviation interest and work

The legend of Bayard at Wikipedia
TheFour Sons of Aymon at Wikipedia

Brussels returns to horse and carriage days with horse-pulled trash trucks

About the Authors

The author and the illustrator for this book were restless women.  Professional career women – a journalist and a commercial artist – they both ended up chronicling the Second World War from Europe.

Author
1894-1969
Hager lived and worked all over the world as a journalist who specialized in aviation news, a war correspondent during WWII, and an employee of the State Department in the 1950s. 

Other books (nonfiction)

Brazil, Giant To The South
Wings Of The Dragon: The Air War In Asia
Washington, City of Destiny
Wings Over The Americas
Frontier By Air (Brazil Takes The Sky Road)
Wings To Wear
Big Loop And Little: The Cowboy’s Story

Other books (fiction)

Janice, Air Line Hostess – YA, career romance
Washington Secretary - YA
Love’s Golden Circle - YA
Dateline: Paris – YA, career romance
The Canvas Castle - YA
Cathy Whitney, President’s Daughter - YA
So High The Hill

Of the lot, a few have minor equine relevance: Cathy Whitney has to leave her beloved horse behind when Daddy is elected president; the heroine of The Canvas Castle balks at moving yet again for her father’s job, in part because she’s acquired a horse; and Big Loop and Little is a nonfiction photo essay of the ranch life.

Kirkus, the fabulously acid review which has been around for quite a while, summed up Cathy Whitney, President’s Daughter in typical style:

Sic Transit--Margaret Truman, Caroline, Lynda Bird and Luci Baines. Well now it's Cathy Whitney, who has to leave her horse Sinbad behind, nickering, when her father is elected President. There's the absolutely ""terrific"" flight there and the first days are drenched in gala occasions from the inauguration on; but there are problems--she doesn't like her quarters and she is allowed to do ""her suite"" over--and she misses Sinbad and her best friend; she resents the disruption of family life. But Sinbad is sent for and Cathy inaugurates ""Ice Box suppers a la White House"" and she gets to have an hour a day with Daddy, and sister Ann gets married, and Cathy Whitney is going ""to be the girl with the lamp""--upholding the symbol of this family. About all that can be said for this is that it indulges girls with fifty stars in their eyes and not a scintilla of sense in their heads. There is a prefatory note, acknowledgements and foreword, along with the welcome reassurance that the ""White House is real.

 Illustrator

Mimi Korach Lesser (1922-)
She went to Europe toward the end of WWII as part of a program for artists to sketch portraits of soldiers in evacuation hospitals, to send home to their families.  Her account of her experiences is something.

Library of Congress Veterans History Project

Korach’s narrative of her time in 1945 Europe
Brown University Library – an example of Lesser’s portraits

Tic-Tac (1973)

Tic-Tac

Leslie Baird, il. Ted Lewin (jacket)
1973, Dodd, Mead & Company

“At first my parents tried to ignore how crazy I was about horses,” Terry explained.  “They thought I’d lose interest.  But when I fell off a few times and still kept riding, they decided I needed some good lessons so I wouldn’t break my neck.  We asked around and found Briar Hill was the best.”

Terry Allen learned to ride at a small farm with an easy-going teacher.  She’s now moved up in the world to hunter/jumper barn Briar Hill Farm and its German cavalry officer owner, Captain Riskin.  Her parents are only willing to spring for a summer camp – all too short – but Terry, like most horse-crazy heroines,  will find a way to keep riding.  But first she must overcome her initial reaction to Riskin’s stern teaching style.  She does, of course, and quickly becomes a favorite pupil.

Terry convinces her parents that riding is a real passion, falls in love with the Briar Hill horse Tic-Tac, tangles with the inevitable sulky brat, Paula, and learns how to deal with being both a barn rat at the mercy of impatient adult boarders and a member of a riding team. 

I’m reluctant to be too critical, both because this is a fond favorite for many people and because Baird was just out of college when she wrote it, inspired by her own experiences with a horse named Tic-Tac.   However, I was disappointed by this book.   The plot and the characters are reminiscent of a modern series book, and the writing lacks ease or style.   

The details are convincing – as they should be, considering author was a barn rat and young competitive rider – and the riding sequences are believable and lively:

Shady jumped all the fences in the same bold style until the last, a stone wall topped by two poles.  When she tried to charge at it, Paula checked her with the reins.  Angrily shaking her head, Shady wrenched the reins from Paula’s hands and took an extra long stride that put her almost on top of the fence.  She twisted acrobatically as she took off, nearly unseating Paula.

And I do like the ending, which manages to be both appealing and realistic. 

A few things are quibbles, more emotional reactions than anything else.  The crusty old cavalry officer/instructor is both a cliché and an asshole.  He’s frequently nasty, and there’s a nasty undertone to the interactions between the students.  Terry notices and is burned by this a few times, but her thirst for riding lessons overcomes her initial doubts and she works hard to impress the old goat.  Sorry.  It works, she becomes a favorite and rapidly learns to overlook his behavior or take pride in surviving his tempers.  

I can see why it’s a favorite, actually.  It has a lot of horsey details of the sort that probably stuck in a lot of readers’ heads forever – how to enter a stall safely, why you shouldn’t let your horse barge into the hindquarters of the horse ahead, how to groom, how to clean a saddle…  That sort of thing is pure joy for a horse-crazy kid.  They’re the equine equivalent of 30 pages of deathly prose about how the spaceship flies – most people groan and skip to the space battle, but genuinely nerdy sci-fi fans dig in.  I just wish the space battle here had been better.

Horses

Tic-Tac: brown 4-year-old TB/QH gelding.
Red Sunset
Shady Lady
Warrior
Flip
Irish Mist
Martini
Bachelor Boy
Chico
Continental
Cricket
Merry Chase

About the Author

b. 1950
An impressively busy child who competed in figure skating and horseback riding, Baird became an equally busy adult who published books of poetry while still in college and this book just one year later.  She has coached figure skating, operated an equine trade show, and rides and trains at her own dressage farm in Ohio.

Full Cry Farm

There’s also a website connected to Down The Aisle, which appears to be from 2011.

Other books
The Smile Of Concrete Angels (poetry)
Open Corners (poetry, with husband Jeff McDonald)
Making Magic: Breeding and Birthing A Healthy Foal (with Meredith Weller, DVM)
Down The Aisle (memoir)

Short Stories

“Lessons With The Master” in Horse Tales For The Soul, Vol. 6
“Flo’s Passion” in Along The Way (Golden Hills Press)

Broncos

Many of my favorite illustrators did a lot of Western-themed pictures.  Most of these artitsts were from the mid-20th century, when the romance of the West was still strong in the book and magazine world, and many of them could make a living on commercial art centered on Westerns.  And perhaps more to the point, many of them actually had ranch backgrounds.  Here's a very small sampling of great equine illustrators' takes on what is probably the quintessential Western image  - the bucking horse. 

C.W. Anderson, Sketchbook 

I tend to associate Anderson with the East due to his many Thoroughbred racehorses and jumpers, but he was born in Nebraska and he had a flair for action, whether it was the sunfish of a rodeo star or the surge of a steeplechaser.

Lorence Bjorklund, Gentle Like A Cyclone

Like Anderson, Bjorklund was a Swedish-American who moved from flyover country to New York and became an artist.  In his case, he was born in Minnesota and began doing Western illustrations early, earning money during art school doing illustrations for pulp Western magazines.

Will James, Scorpion

In a reversal of the above artists, Will James was born to a city (Quebec) family, and left home to become a cowboy.  Always an enthusiastic artist, he only focused on it after being bucked off a horse and seriously injured.

William Moyers, Broomtail

Moyers was from Georgia, but moved to Colorado as a teenager and ended up competing in rodeos.  He went west for art school, to Los Angeles, and worked for Disney. 

The Horse Who Lived Upstairs (1944)

 

It's been an odd little winter so far.  Unlike the past 3 years, it's been mild (notwithstanding an ice storm on Halloween, that is...) and really only one snowfall in 2012.  And it was 60 today, a morning to startle you awake when you blow out the door late for work and having to walk the dog first and discover - warmth.  No coat, no hat, no gloves, no mittens warmth. 

This time last week it was much different.  The sky that's a lovely if windy blue tonight was white last Friday night, snow clouds obscuring everything.  And we woke on Saturday to a perfect white snowfall that was turning quickly to a freezing drizzle, coating the inch of snow with a hard, slick crust.  The dog did not appreciate this, as she had to break through with every step, and our walk was extremely slow.  I was estatic.  I'm torn, on most weekends, between blissful sloth and the nagging urge I should be GETTING MORE DONE, and inclement weather relieves me of that burden; I couldn't go Out, it was Snowing.  So there. 

I spent most of the weekend hanging at the window, watching the birds at the bird feeder.  Even the cardinals, who have been largely indifferent to the feeders since kicking junior out of the nest (they spent much of the late summer patiently flying from feeder to teen cardinal, stuffing seeds into him) reappeared.  Dog and family both became inured to squawks like "The nuthatches!  The nuthatches!" and "Wrens!  There were wrens!"  The dog is only interested in the feeders as far as I sometimes throw stale bread out there, and the family was only briefly interested when I happily announced that a hawk had just come by (and missed), executing a hairpin turn directly in front of the window.  That hawk and I seem bound on a collision course; he blew by me by a few feet last week, having apparently mistaken a bit of dog fur I was sweeping off the sidewalk for something tasty. 

The Horse Who Lived Upstairs

Phyllis McGinley, il. Helen Stone

1944, J.B. Lippincott Company

There was once a horse named Joey who was discontented.

A city horse, Joey lives in a highrise, drinks from an old bathtub, pulls a vegetable cart and longs for the country life.

"This is no life for a horse," he used to say to the Percheron who lived in the next stall to him.  "We city horses don't know what real living is.  I want to the move to the country and sleep in a red barn with a weathervane on top, and kick up my heels in a green meadow."

But when Joey gets his chance at a rural idyll, he learns that there are unexpected drawbacks, and that he may just be a city horse at heart.

A wonderful pairing of energetic illustration and wistful writing, and that eternal favorite them of where home is.  My beloved old copy appears above, which explains the various blots and scratches.  It's on the fragile side.  I remember reading this book as a child and being utterly captivated by the fact there were horses living in a building.  Neat!  And, of course, the city itself was fascinating.  All those old children's books where New York was the star, all tantalizing. 
  


Other Books (childrens')
The Horse Who Had His Picture In The Paper - sequel (wheee! I didn't realize this existed)
The Plain Princess
The Most Wonderful Doll In The World


About the Author
1905-1978
A poet who wrote children's stories and articles about gardening, a Pulitzer Prize winner who lived happily in the suburbs, and a feminist whose affection for a traditional persona vexed roughly the same percentage of people as it pleased, McGinley seems to have enjoyed herself thoroughly.  Several sources mention a childhood spent on the move, often in less-than-cushy rural circumstances, and that would seem to illuminate the presentation of a less-than-idyllic country life in this book.

About the Illustrator
1903-1978?
I didn't find much about Helen Stone, only a snippet on Google Books from Something About The Author, indicating that she was a friend of McGinley's who brought over some horse drawings one day, as inspiration for a poem. She was, however, an art school graduate who'd studied in Paris, although it seems that this was her first book.

Links
2008 NYT article about McGinley
cover of Time magazine, June 18, 1965
Blog Mrs. Sandusky Reads! with post about Helen Stone (Mrs. Sandusky also has posts on pony book author Lavinia R. Davis (both non-horsey, one for Roger And The Fox); a 12-year-old Caldecott winner for The Good-Luck Horse
Ask Art Helen Stone
The Children's Literature Research Collection on Helen Stone

Lone Hunter’s Gray Pony (1956)

Lone Hunter’s Gray Pony

Donald Worcester, il. Paige Pauley

1956, Oxford University Press

1985, A Sundance Book, Texas Christian University Press (shown)

The gray pony snorted once more, then relaxed.  His head had been held high; now it was lowered and stretched out toward Lone Hunter, so that the boy was able to stroke the broad forehead.  In a few minutes the pony was rubbing his soft, black nose against the boy’s chest while Lone Hunter scratched his black-tipped ears.

Oglala Sioux warrior Red Eagle has returned triumphant from a raiding party on the Pawnee with a mount for his son, Lone Hunter, who has been yearning to join the buffalo hunters.  Lone Hunter immediately begins training his beautiful gray pony to the tricks of being a warrior’s horse – galloping alongside running prey and leaping away to safety the moment he hears an arrow twang – even as he practices the skills of a hunter and warrior.   His great bond with Gray Pony proves to be an advantage when Lone Hunter falls in front of buffalo – and the pony doesn’t bolt to safety but waits for him. 

By the beginning of the fall buffalo hunt, boy and pony are ready and waiting for permission from Red Eagle.  Only one thing worries Lone Hunter; in a society where horse theft is a mark of great bravery and honor, the tribes always bring their valuable horses into the camp each night for safety.  Only the old, slow horses ridden by children and women are left outside.  Lone Hunter has been leaving Gray Pony outside the camp rather than face mockery or question – why should a boy’s pony be tended carefully? 

When the pony is stolen by Kiowas, Lone Hunter risks death, entering the hostile lands of that tribe to find and steal back Gray Pony.

A short, simply and well-written book which easily and effectively blends an adventure story with interesting background on the Ogala Sioux, particularly their remarkable horsemanship:

Lone Hunter took the heavy bow in his left hand.  It was beautifully made, ideal for use on horseback, and any warrior would be glad to have one as good.  He straightened his left arm and, by straining hard, pulled the sinew bowstring nearly to his ear with his right hand.

"It is yours, my son,” said Red Eagle.  “I did not know your arms were so strong.  But you must be able to draw it many times without tiring, while riding at full speed across rough ground, before you talk of hunting the buffalo.”

Sequels
Lone Hunter And The Cheyennes
Lone Hunter’s First Buffalo Hunt
Lone Hunter And The Wild Horses

Links
Texas Tech University, Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library
Texas A&M University Press Consortium
Portrait of Al Zirr at Fine Art America
Maud W. Makemson's bio at Vassar

Other edition
1961 original cover at Amazon 

About the Author

(1915- )
Donald Emmett Worcester was born in Arizona but raised largely on a farm in southern California, at the edge of the Mojave Desert.  His parents were divorced; his father wandered in and out of his children's lives, while their mother struggled as a rare female astronomist trying to make it in academia (see thoroughly interesting link above).  After serving in the Navy, was a history professor at the University of Florida and Texas Christian University.  He was president of the Western Writers of America (1973-1974).   The dust jacket of the 1985 edition says he's retired and enjoying writing and raising Arabian horses, and owns Al Zirr, a son of Cass Ole, the black Arabian who starred in the film version of The Black Stallion.

Books (nonfiction)

The Apaches: Eagles Of The Southwest
Pioneer Trails West
Brazil: From Colony To World Power
Forked Tongues And Broken Treaties
Cowboy With A Camera: Erwin E. Smith, Cowboy Photographer
The Texas Longhorn: Relic Of The Past, Asset For The Future
The Three Worlds Of Latin America
The Chisholm Trail
The Texas Cowboy
Kit Carson: Mountain Scout
John Paul Jones: Soldier Of The Sea
The Weapons Of American Indians
Early History of The Navaho Indians
The Spanish Mustang

Books (fiction)

War Pony
Brazos Scout
Man On Two Ponies
Gone To Texas
Western Horse Tales

Other writing

Apparently did a Spanish translation of Lois Lenski’s Cowboy Small.
A Visit From Father and Other Tales Of The Mojave (memoir)

About the Artist
I was unable to find anything about Paige Pauley, but I had to mention the illustrations, which enhance the book.