About the author
Priscilla Holton Neff wrote children’s early readers for Ginn. With Theodore Clymer, she wrote How It Is Nowadays, on teaching children to read. She also wrote children’s books for the confident reader, of which Little Miss Callie and Tressa’s Dream are two. Tressa’s Dream is her one horse book. It is highly unusual in that it features a goat, not the most common partner for a horse.
Finding the book
Easy to find in the US. It was not published in the UK.
Links and sources
Terri A. Wear: Horse Stories, an Annotated Bibliography, Scarecrow Press, 1987
National Library of Congress
Thank you to Lisa Catz for the summary and picture.
Bibliography (horse books only)
Tressa’s Dream
D McKay & Co, New York, 1965, 86 pp, illus Marcia Howe
When Tressa and her family move to the ranch her father grew up on, she believes it means her dream of owning a chestnut filly will come true. Her father had his own horse here when he was her age. She gets a stall ready, and one day, hearing something inside, she runs to the stall. It’s a goat. She is
bitterly disappointed and wants nothing to do with the goat, Tillie. Tressa’s brother explains to her that Tillie was borrowed so that Tressa could learn to look after an animal in preparation for getting a horse. When she sees a neglected pony at the horse sale, she has to choose whether to let go her dream of getting a splendid horse.
