About the author
Linda Oatman High is an American writer of children’s books, who started writing after working as a waitress, a lifeguard, and a secretary. Whilst not writing, she’s in a basement band. Oatman High’s books are generally aimed at the younger reader, and are mostly historical. The Girl on the High-Diving Horse follows a girl who longed to do the horse stunts she saw.
A plan to revitalise Atlantic City, whose steel pier was used for diving acts, recently tried to reintroduce the practice, but the public outcry led to the plan being shelved, public opinion on horses diving having changed from regarding it as a spectacle to seeing it as cruel.
Finding the books
Easy to find.
Links and sources
Linda Oatman High’s website
Bibliography (horse books only)
A Christmas Star
Holiday House, New York, 1997, illus Ronald Himler
The heroine is looking forward to getting special Christmas treats at church during the Depression, but they’re stolen.
Winter Shoes for Shadow Horse
Boyds Mill Press, Honesdale, PA, 2001, illus Ted Lewin
A boy follows the sound of a hammer to a blacksmith’s, which is warm on a wintry night. The blacksmith is his father, and the boy watches as he makes shoes for Shadow Horse. It’s a special night, as the boy will get to make his first horseshoe.
the girl on the high diving horse
Philomel Books, New York, 2003, illus Ted Lewin
Puffin, 2005, pb
Ivy Cordelia is eight. She spends the summer of 1936 in Atlantic City with her photographer father, and dreams of being the girl who perches on a horse as it dives into a tank of water.
Tenth Avenue Cowboy
Erdmans Books for Young Readers, Grand Rapids MI, 2008, illus Bill Farnsworth
Ben and his family move from their western ranch to New York City in 1910. It’s a difficult
move for Ben, who misses the prairies and ranch life, but when he learns that there are
actually cowboys in New York, who race along the railroad tracks to warn people on the tracks there’s a train on the way, he starts to feel more at home.
