Biography
Alan Davidson is the husband of writer Anne Digby, and has written one of the best of the school-and-pony genre. He also wrote under the name A D Langholm, and the book appears under both names, with more recent reprints being under the name Alan Davidson.
Queen Rider combines school and ponies and has a spikily difficult teenage anti-heroine, Bonnie, and a realistically drawn school. Sadly for the school-and–pony genre, Queen Rider was the only pony book AD Langholm wrote.
Many books in both the school and pony genres hold that school (or ponies) cure all. That is not what happens in Queen Rider. It is doubtful right to the end whether Bonnie will actually decide she is going to become a slightly more conventional member of school society, and the twists and turns of the plot keep taking you by surprise.
Finding the book
The book is not hard to find in any of its guises, and nor is it hugely expensive.
Bibliography
Queen Rider
W H Allen, London, 1979, 120pp. Cover photo Pictor International.
Magnet, pb, 1980
Methuen Children’s Books, 1980
Straw Hat, Cambridge, 1993, cover art Lorna Cowan, 160 pp.
Bonnie Wyndham is proud of having been thrown out of three schools, and is now on her first day at Almonside, a school with a proud tradition of sporting excellence, and which has its own stables. Bonnie’s mother is desperate for her to succeed at this school, but Bonnie is even more determined not to. The riding teacher at Almonside, Miss Caradon, is unphased by Bonnie’s awful bolshiness, and slowly, very slowly, Bonnie does come round.
