Month: August 2024
First catch your unicorn
The pony book has often nodded towards what was going on in the children’s book genre as a whole: adventure in the 1950s, realism in the 1970s, and from the 1990s, fantasy. In 1997, J K Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was published. It was an astounding success, and spawned a host of fantasy-themed children’s…
It’s pink! It sparkles! It must be a pony book!
The 1990s and early years of the 2000s saw many pony books leave behind the realistic covers of the 1950s and 1960s. A substantial proportion of those aimed at the younger reader were badged with pink and sparkles, and winsome straplines. Peter Clover’s 1990s Sheltie series was a rare example of a series that succeeded…
The pony book in WWII: part 2
This is part two of the talk I did some years ago at a children’s books conference. You can find part one, which looks at pre-war pony books, and those books that generally didn’t deal with war, here. Do you mention the war? For pony book authors, there is a pretty sharp division by sex which…
The pony book in WWII: part 1
A few years ago I spoke at a children’s books conference at Bristol on pony books in World War II and how the war changed the way horses and riding were portrayed in children’s literature at the time. The main theme of the conference was hobbies and how they were portrayed in children’s books, so…
And the next one is … pony books in the 1990s
Disapproval of pony books by critics of children’s fiction may have had an impact on the British market, but it certainly didn’t in America. British librarians tended to view pony fiction as elitist and outmoded: American librarians saw it as a way of hooking in readers. Terri A Wear wrote Horse Stories, an Annotated Bibliography in 1987…
The 1980s and the pony book
By the 1980s, the number of old titles being re-published obscured the fact the number of new titles had plummeted: only half as many were printed in the 1980s as in the 1960s. The new This was the decade that saw the publication of Michael Morpurgo’s War Horse (1982), though it made little impact at the time. …
Pony books in the 1970s
The 1970s saw a hefty cut in the number of pony books published. Only half as many were published as in the 1960s. Reprints Plenty of titles were still appearing, but many of them were reprints. The Jill books appeared in a new guise with covers by W D Underwood. Pullein-Thompson titles were regularly reprinted…
Fame: when riders turn into authors
Hands up if you knew Katie Price had written pony books (and hands up too if you’ve actually read one). Katie Price’s books were a phenomenon of our celebrity-obsessed times, in which ghost-written books sell because of who they’re by, rather than what they’re about. The celebrity who turns to pony book writing is rare: the casts…
The 1960s pony book
The 1960s was another productive decade for pony books; at least as far as the number published went. Carrying on Many authors active in the 1950s kept on writing: Mary Gervaise and Judith M Berrisford added to their series fiction. Neither the Georgia not Jackie series opened gates to new pastures. Georgia carried on having secure, family-based adventures; Jackie…
The 1960s and the pony paperback
The 1950s had seen more pony books published than any other decade, but the 1960s were not far behind. It was in the 1960s the paperback pony book really came into its own, after a rather slow start with Puffin Books, the children’s line of Penguin. Puffin printed Joanna Cannan’s Shetland pony story Hamish in 1944, as…