About the author
Ruth Tomalin was born in County Kilkenny, and was educated at King’s College, London. During the Second World War she served in the Women’s Land Army, and when war ended, she worked as a reporter for local newspapers. All her books reflect her love of wildlife, and her concern for the impact humanity has on it and on the countryside. She’s written several books for younger readers, amongst which is The Green Wishbone (1975), which has some pony content, but she’s probably best known for her Ralph Oliver trilogy (The Garden House, The Spring House and Away to the West) which Peter Hollindale describes as ‘longer and more exacting’ than her other novels, but treating important themes with ‘sympathy, tact and humour, and with acute, uncondescending insight.’
Finding the book
Easy to find in all its printings.
Links and sources
20th Century Children’s Writers, ed Kirkpatrick, 1978
Bibliography
A Green Wishbone
Faber, London, 1975, 115 pp.
Puffin Books, Harmondsworth, 1978, 106 pp, pb, illus Gavin Rowe
Republished as The Green Wishbone
Faber, London, 1989, 128 pp, illus Gavin Rowe
Jon and Holly wish on the green wishbone brooch: Jon wishes for a school with animals, Holly for ponies to ride. Both of them find their happiness threatened.
