The blog.
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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…
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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…
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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. …
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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The 1950s gallop on
Were you to analyse how many pony books have been published over the last decades, and when, the 1950s come out on top. Geoffrey Trease said “In those days you could have sold Richard III if you had given it the right wrapper and called it A Pony for Richard.” This is unfortunately true. Out…
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The Flood: Pony Book series in the 1950s
The 1950s saw a massive increase in the number of pony books published. The war was over; rationing was coming to an end. We had never had it so good, so Harold Macmillan said. The welfare state was becoming established, employment was high. The 1950s pony book reflected the spirit of optimism of the age:…
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Pony books in the 1940s
After Joanna Cannan introduced her heroine Jean to the world in A Pony for Jean (1936), she opened the gate to a fresh wave of stories. Ann Stafford wrote a fine holiday adventure in Five Proud Riders (1937), with young authors Katharine Hull and Pamela Whitlock contributing decent examples of ponies and holidays in their Oxus series in the late 1930s (The Far-Distant Oxus, 1937, Escape…