About the author
Bianca Bradbury (1908–82) lived in Connecticut. She started her writing career with magazines such as Family Circle and McCall’s, and once she had children, she began writing picture books. She graduated to writing books for older readers, and ended her career with over 40 books to her name, ranging from picture books to young adult books dealing with contemporary issues. Many of her titles were about animals, and at least two centered on horses.
Finding the books
Reasonably easy to find. Neither was published in the UK.
Links and sources
Bianca Bradbury on Good Reads
Bibliography (horse books only)
Happy Acres
Steck Co, Austin, Texas, 1958, illus Betsy Warren
Set on a farm, where everyone has their role in life. One day a donkey comes by, and tells the horse how happy he is because he doesn’t work. This radical idea soon spreads to all the other animals. No one will do anything for anyone else, and the animals end up quarrelling. The farmer changes the
name of the farm to Hungry Acres. The donkey visits again, and the animals realise they are not happy now they do not work. They go back to working together and soon the name of the farm is changed back to Happy Acres.
My Pretty Girl
Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1974, illus Charles Robinson, 172 pp
Shannon Kelly knows very little about horses, but then a friend tells her about a horse which is going for free. Shannon decides she has to have it, remembering that her father, now dead, used to say the horse was the “noblest of God’s creatures”. Once Shannon is the proud owner of Queenie, she has plenty of problems to face. She doesn’t know how to look after the horse, and keeping her
in the back garden of her housing development home doesn’t go down well with the neighbours. The Zoning Commission gets involved and there is a town meeting to determine Queenie’s fate.
