Winter Of The Owl (1980)

Well, it's been a while.  Four years.  I was busy.  Still am busy.  I let this blog dwindle because I didn't have time for the sort of entries I used to make.  Still don't.  But - I have time to make some entries.  The perfect is the enemy of the good.  So here we go.

 

Winter of the Owl
June Andrea Hanson
1980, Macmillan
Illustrator (cover), Ruth Sanderson

He whinnied softly and stepped forward, so he stood between us and the mares. In the darkness of the shed, the white-lightning blaze which shot down his face seemed luminous, radiant. He was alive with magnificent power, so like the stallion. I stood quite still before him.

Janey’s household is filled with tension; her father, struggling to cope post-heart attack with his newly purchased ranch, clashes constantly with her old-school grandfather, whose experience ranching is offset by his own declining health.  In a Montana snowscape at Christmas, the hiring of a Cheyenne hand and his son anger the elderly grandfather even more – and the decision to sell Janey’s adored colt, Fire Dancer, turns the already moody teenager into another source of stress.

 Frankly, I’m surprised anyone is still alive at the end of this book.  One recovering heart patient, two senior citizens who are still trying to do full-time ranch work, a teenaged girl erupting in rage, a remote ranch…   It seems more like a suspense novel than a horse book. Or, rather, a teen coming of age novel about learning to deal with angry adults and cute boys who totally swoop in and steal your horse's affections.  

This is a sequel to 1979’s Summer of the Stallion (the stallion mentioned in the quote above).  Hanson grew up on a ranch, attended the University of Colorado and ended up in first the Peace Corps and then New York City.

Other books
Summer of the Stallion (1979)

Star Rider (1985) or Choose Your Own Adventure goes Pony Book

 Star Rider
Carole Carreck, il. Steve Jones (cover)  Peter Wilkes (internal)
1985, Puffin Books

You, the reader, are the heroine of this story. You have ridden horses all your life and have great natural ability as a rider. You have secretarial qualifications, but your one ambition in life is to own a good horse and make a career for yourself riding. 


A choose-your-own-adventure style pony book from the UK, this loopy (literally) role-playing game/book kicks off with your purchase of a show pony named Braid.  The action quickly expands to include two handsome, mysterious, occasionally smitten men and a lot of ambitious decision-making about the best course of action to bring Braid and you to your full potential.
 

I really can't resist a book with a horse on the cover. I remember the days of the CYOA books (the 1980s) and I think I liked the American version better.  There's something slightly alarming about having a book assert that I (or, as they put it, YOU) am driving Range Rovers through Wales while arguing about bloodsports and exclaiming "Bother!" when passing a woman on a push-bike.  And yet, the format is fun.  Something I'd almost forgotten until skimming this one just now is that the adventures can end badly. Braid (what a name!) can become too injured to compete. You can become too injured to compete.  And in the startlingly brutal final words of several possible storylines, "Your adventure ends here." 

Notes
This series, "Starlight Adventures," was designed to appeal to girls (the CYOAs were often horror/mystery series, and typically appealed to boys) and appear not to be related to each other. In other words, this was the only horsey one.
 
Links
Review of Star Rider 
Review of Star Rider

The Winter Horse (2014)

The Winter Horses

Philip Kerr, il. Eva Kolenko (cover)

2014, Alfred A. Knopf, imprint of Random House

(paperback is Ember imprint of RH)

“Oh, the Przewalski’s are strong, sir. None stronger. And they’re clever, too. Resourceful. Cunning, even.”

In late 1941, zookeeper Maxim Borisovich Melknik is the only worker left at the State Steppe Nature Reserve of the Ukraine, or Askaniya-Nova. The Germans, busy expanding their eastern front, have arrived in the form of a group of SS led by Captain Grenzmann. Maxim, who recalls the German founder of Askaniya-Nova with great fondness and is not the most enthusiastic of Communists, is prepared to give Grenzmann and his men the benefit of the doubt.  Until they start eating his animals.  

The reserve consists of a zoo and a large wildlife preserve; the crown jewel of this remote Soviet park is the herd of Przewalski horses.  Grenzmann, a restless German, begins almost immediately to search for a way to eradicate these “inferior” horses. He’s largely successful, but a breeding pair (Temukin and Borte) escapes and the increasingly obsessed Nazi launches a hunt for the dangerously fertile horses.

At the same time, a member of another dangerously inferior race is hiding out at the reserve.  Kalinka, a Jewish girl who’d barely escaped the mass murder of her family, is making the reserve one more stop in her endless journey of escape:

“Three uncles, three aunts, my brothers, my sisters, my grandparents, my great-grandmother, and all my cousins. Everyone had to gather in the botanical gardens in our city. Which is where it happened. I mean, where they and all the others were killed. Not just my family. But every family. At least, every family that was Jewish. Fifteen or twenty thousand people. I’m not sure.”

Kalinka is charmed by her encounters with the herds of Przewalski, and horrified when the Germans machine-gun most of them. But that horror is only the latest in her histories of grief and death, and she almost immediately has to worry about surviving a Russian winter.

Maxim and his dog, a Borzoi/Russian Wolfhound named Taras, help Kalinka survive a blizzard, but she can’t stay there. Grenzmann’s passion to kill those last horses leads him straight to Kalinka, who must run again.

Przewalski horses are, as the book admits, wild. You do not ride them, you do not halter or pet them. They’re closer to zebras than to ponies. During the first half of the book, the horses are shown to be smart and insightful and a little more accepting of handling than you’d expect, which the humans note and chalk up to their extreme need.  But in the second half of the book, as Kalinka sets out alone into the snowy landscape with only the horses and Taras for company, the animals become the drivers of the action and all but speak to one another. Kalinka, dependent on the horses for warmth at the very least, is briefly the dependent of the animals.

With jaws bared viciously, the first wolf – a big male – launched himself like a streak of snarling gray lightning at the girl, only to be met by a perfectly judged double kick from Temujin as both the stallion’s rear hooves lashed out in unison and connected very solidly with the wolf’s body

Despite the hostility of the wolves (historically symbolic of the Nazis), the worst, most enduring dangers come from humans.  For a time, all the humans they encounter are brutal monsters. 

An interesting book, blending realism and a WWII legend nicely.

About the Author

Kerr is best known for a series of spy thrillers, but has also written other children's books under the name P.B. Kerr.

 

Links

Kirkus review

Book optioned for animated film 

Author website

Website for Askaniya-Nova

 

Robin Kane: The Mystery of the Blue Pelican (1966)

Robin Kane: The Mystery of the Blue Pelican

Eileen Hill, il. Sylvia Haggander

1966, A Whitman Book, Western Publishing Co.

Robin Kane, 13, lives in Pacific Point, California with her parents, 14-year-old brother Kevin and younger sister Amy.  Best friend Melinda Hunter’s father Maxfield is a film and TV producer who’s bringing his latest project Changeling to town and casting the Kane kids and his own stable of palomino horses – including Robin’s beloved Nugget – as extras.  Most excitingly, the star of Changeling is teen sensation Moira Rafferty, and she’s going to visit the Kane household!

This is the first book of the series, and at best, it’s just too simple to be an enjoyable read for an adult. And there are a few too many mid-century nightmares, from Mexican mamacitas to Irishmen lilting charmingly about leprechauns. I’m going to be lazy here and refer you to another website for a nice summation of the book. I quit after the third chapter. In my defense, I was reading it for this blog and Robin’s reaction to hearing her horse had vanished is to be sad, finish dinner and go to bed for some bad dreams about her lost horse.  Not very horse-book-heroine, Robin.  Her horse, Nugget, doesn’t actually appear until near the end, so overall not really a great example of a pony/horse book.

More complete review at Lost Classics of Teen Lit, 1939-1989

 Series

The Mystery of the Blue Pelican

The Mystery of the Phantom

The Mystery of Glengary Castle

The Candle Shop Mystery

Mystery in the Clouds

The Monster of Wolf Point

Flying Roundup (1957)

Flying Roundup

Genevieve Torrey Eames, il. Lorence F. Bjorklund

1957, Julian Messner, Inc.

The noise grew louder and around the base of the mountain came a small band of horses, manes and tails flying and a cloud of dust swirling about them, kicked up by their galloping hoofs.  Johnny’s heart raced at the sight.  The leaders started into the valley, halted and swerved away again.  Then, above the hoofbeats, came the roar of a motor and a small yellow plane swung into sight, following the horses and flying so low it seemed almost to skim the brush and willows along the stream.  As the horses hesitated it circled out to head them off and then roared up behind them, sending them in a mad stampede up the valley.

Johnny Shaw is dozing, postponing the end of a camping trip, when he sees a roundup of wild horses, dominated by an airplane.  The scene is brutal – the terrified herd runs down and crushes a foal, and the cowboys frankly tell Johnny that the wild horses being driven into a truck are destined for a cannery – but Johnny’s torn.  The pilot is the father of his two best friends, Dan and Linda Cameron.  Vern is newly home from Korea, and trying to use his Air Force skills to tide over his new ranch.  Johnny recognizes the family’s genuine need, but when he spots an overlooked band of wild horses, he heads into the hills to find a way to get them moving before anyone else spots them.

There are two kinds of children’s books – those where the villains are the villains, and those where the villains are really just people you don’t know well enough.  This is the latter.  Johnny comes to understand where Vern’s coming from, and how the money from his flying roundups is intended for good, and somehow the early scene with the agonized foal is overwritten.  It’s not very satisfying. 

About the Author

1894-1991

Other books by Eames (horse)

Pat Rides The Trail (1946) il. Dan Noonan

A Horse To Remember (1947) il. Paul Brown

The Good Luck Colt (1953) il. Paul Brown

Ghost Town Cowboy (1957) il. Paul Brown

Other books by Eames (dog)

Handy of the Triple S (1949) il. Paul Brown

Short Stories

Jarvis Discovers Gold" appears in the anthology Horses, Horses, Horses: Palominos And Pintos, Polo Ponies And Plow Horses, Morgans And Mustangs edited by Phyllis Fenner

Someday I’ll Race Him in Young Wings – the Magazine of the Boys’ and Girls’ Club