About the author
Janet Rogers Howe wrote several children’s books, most of them about animals. Amongst them are two horse stories: Trinket and Thunder and Jerry. Alas I have been unable to find any biographical information about the author. If anyone can help, do please get in touch.
Finding the books
Trinket is hard to find and can be expensive. Thunder and Jerry is reasonably easy to find.
Links and sources
Thank you to Lisa Catz for the photographs and summaries.
Bibliography (horse books only)
trinket
Westminster Press, Philadephia, 1961, 157 pp, illus Janet Smalley
Trinket is a Shetland pony who was orphaned when she was only a couple of days old. Young Grant Morrow saves the filly. When he leaves home he sells her to a good home. After one happy summer, the grandchildren move, and Trinket is offered as a prize in an advertising contest. Tony wins, and promises to share Trinket with the other children in his neighbourhood. Trinket is very happy, but the neighbourhood is to be developed. Tony cannot take Trinket, so she is sold on again, this time to a circus. Trinket’s been pretty lucky up to now, but can her luck hold out?
Thunder and Jerry
Lothrop, Lee & Shepherd, New York, 1949, 212 pp
From the moment that Jerry first lays eyes on the big bay gelding at a horse sale, he knows that the horse would become an important part of his life. But the horse he names “Thunder”, is bought to replace his father’s broken tractor, and there is no time or money to have a saddle horse on the farm. Thunder is trained to pull the farm equipment, and does his job well, but Jerry, along with his friend Pete, who works at the fox-hunting stable, feels that Thunder is too good a horse to be a work horse.
