Doodlebug (1977)

Doodlebug
Irene Brady, author and illustrator
1977, Houghton Mifflin Company

Jennifer loved horses. All horses, really. But the horse she wanted was a Beautiful Black Stallion with Flowing Mane and Tail (she always thought of it in capital letters). And it just had to be more beautiful than Myra Bank's chestnut mare, Daisy!

Jennifer Dickens, who seems to be around 10, is glumly sitting on the rail at a livestock auction, contemplating the paltry $14.52 she's saved for her dream horse, when she impulsively buys a starving black pony to save him from a kill buyer. She takes him home, nurtures him back to health and tries to ride him. Ouch. Her new pony's showy trot is agony to ride. None of this is helped by her bete noir Myra, a teen neighbor whose position as a horse owner has soured relations by placing Jennifer in the position of begging for rides and Myra in the position of benevolent dictatorship.


Her parents, who breed goats, are gently supportive but suggest that Doodlebug can earn his keep by pulling a cart. Jennifer isn't thrilled at the idea of owning a carthorse, but agrees to try. The now healthy and strangely sleek pony almost trains himself and before long, they are smoothly delivering goat milk to her parents' customers. With a little poisonous input from Myra, of course:

"That little Doodlebug is the sweetest workhorse I ever saw!"

Strangers appear, revelations occur, Myra suffers a put-down that seems entirely overdone, and Jennifer fears she'll lose her little black horse for good.

A very short (35 pages) book with plenty of very nice illustrations and a brisk, pleasing story. A few minor quibbles - it seems odd that the goat breeder parents don't geld the pony (goat people, from what I've gleaned as a lifelong addict of books on how to raise livestock, are not squeamish about this) and Jennifer can hardly be a good rider just from cadging a few rides on someone else's horse - but overall a good story. I do wonder about the conflicted heroine dramas, though, where the little girl protagonist basically doesn't want the horse/pony she ends up with, and it takes the threat of losing the creature for her to realize - oh, I love Mr. Bones! It just seems a little - bratty?

Odds and Ends
The story itself is fairly timeless, but in the illustrations those parents are the very picture of 1970s anti-style.

The name Doodlebug is cute but unusual enough I went googling and came up with:
* A nickname for a German bomb used in WWII (which I remembered from far too many British kid books involving the Blitz)
* A nickname for a 1930's Ford car that was turned into a tractor during WWII steel shortages
* a nickname for small, self-propelled train cars
* a nickname for pill bugs

The common denominator seems to be smallness.


Books by Irene Brady (horse)
America's Horses & Ponies
Doodlebug

Books written by others, illustrated by Irene Brady (horse)
Cloud Horse by Jill Pinkwater

Links
Bio at Nature Works Press
Irene Brady's Nature Drawing blog
The American Hackney Horse Society - the pony page

Other editions
Also a paperback from Scholastic, 1977

Danza!
Lynn Hall
1981, Charles Scribner's Sons

Paulo Camacho is a young boy whose grandfather Diego raises Paso Fino horses on a farm in Puerto Rico. Though mares are seen as unfit mounts for men, Paulo adores the broodmare Twenty over any of the restless stallions until she gives birth to a beautiful bay foal. The colt Danza becomes the love of Paulo's life. His growing confidence smoothes out family discord, and Paulo slowly grows closer to his hard grandfather until the day the young stallion founders.

Here I must say that the description of founder's effects rank right up there in the crowded halls of stomach-churning animal torture in fiction.

Protruding from the bottom of the leg was a stump of tissue oozing blood and encasing the denuded inner bones of Danza's foot.

You have to have a strong stomach to read much horse and dog lit, but I distinctly recall being unable to finish this particular book for a long time as a kid.

Around this time, the horse-loving American colonel that's been hanging around trying to buy a stallion off Diego - who will sell mares but refuses to sell a stallion to an American because he's bitter that his sons all abandoned Puerto Rico for America's promise - turns up and makes a bargain with Diego. He'll take the horse back to his Louisiana farm and try to save him; if he succeeds, he'll keep him for a breeding season as a leasee, and then send him home. Diego agrees, even though he's unhappy that Paulo goes along.

In America, Paulo thrives under the warm praise of the colonel, so unlike his grandfather's silent refusal to encourage, and Danza struggles back to health. Problems arise as time passes and no mention is made of Danza's return to Puerto Rico - and when an abusive trainer is brought in to produce ribbons for Danza and the colonel.

Similar to most of Hall's books, but somehow less memorable. The differences are many - semi-tropical Puerto Rico and Louisiana instead of the Midwest, a boy hero instead of a girl - but many of the elements are the same as previous books. A passionate love of a child for an animal, the animal's growth and training, the child's disillusionment and acceptance of human complexity. Unusually for Hall's books, however, her hero never reaches the same kind of acceptance of his tarnished friend the colonel that her female heroes regularly reach about disappointing mentors and friends. There is more of the sense of right and wrong here than in most Hall books, which is odd considering that the colonel, for all his weakness and shadiness, does a spectacular good deed when he rescues Danza from the lingering death Diego has left him to suffer.

Themes
Horse Show
Abuse
Rescue
Missing Daddy - a father is MIA
My Parents Aren't So Bad, After All
Sibling Jealousy

Other Books by Author (horse)
Flying Changes
The Mystery Of Pony Hollow (aka The Ghost Pony)
The Mystery Of The Phantom Pony (aka The Mystery of Plum Park Pony)
Tin Can Tucker
Ride A Dark Horse
A Horse Called Dragon (aka Wild Mustang)
New Day For Dragon
Dragon's Delight
Dragon Defiant
The Something-Special Horse
Megan's Mare (aka The Problem Pony)
Ride A Wild Dream
The Boy In The Off-White Hat
The Horse Trader
Fair Maiden
The Whispered Horse
Mrs. Portree's Pony
Captain: Canada's Flying Pony (comic)
Tazo And Me (nonfiction)