Featured Author

Born December 28, 1895 in Moscow, Idaho
Died August 15, 1981 in La Jolla, California

Carol Ryrie Brink wrote nearly forty plays, children's books, books for adults and collections of poetry but is principally remembered for three tales, all for children. She was born in 1895 in the small town of Moscow in the remote and only recently admitted state of Idaho. Though she and her family lived far from other relatives, they did carry on the family tradition of naming a girl in every generation Caroline, but giving each girl a distinctive nickname such as Kitty, Carrie, Caddie, etc. Since she was born near Christmas, Brink's mother decided that for this generation, Caroline Ryrie would be Carol.

Though she never dwelt on it, Brink's childhood was marked by tragedy. Her father immigrated to the US from Scotland at the age of twenty and married her mother, Henrietta Watkins, the daughter of a country doctor. Her father died of tuberculosis when Brink was only five years old. Her grandfather was murdered the following year. When she was eight her mother, who had remarried but showed insipient signs of instability, committed suicide. At this time she settled into the care of her grandmother, Caroline Watkins and two aunts, Winifred and Elsie. Beyond the maternal care she found in their company, Brink also absorbed the stories of frontier life from her grandmother, whose nickname was Caddie. These tales became the basis for Brink's book, Caddie Woodlawn.

Brink attended the University of Idaho there in Moscow, Idaho but for her senior year, she transferred to the University of California, Berkeley, graduating in 1918. That same year she returned to Moscow, Idaho and married Raymond Woodard Brink, a mathematics professor at the University of Idaho. They had a son in 1919 and a daughter in 1930.

In 1919, Professor Brink received an appointment to teach at the University of Edinburgh and for the next few years they lived in Scotland and, then later, France.

As with many of the authors profiled in our featured author essays, Brink wrote from an early age, but set aside those activities during the early years of her family's life. Inspired by the stories she shared with her children, she began writing for Sunday School papers and then national magazines. She published some children's plays in 1928 but her first book for children, Anything Can Happen on the River did not appear until 1934. Her next book, Caddie Woodlawn received the 1936 Newberry Medal and became the book on which her reputation was built.

AS mentioned earlier, the story of Caddie Woodlawn, was based substantially on the life of her grandmother. Brink's grandmother was still alive when she wrote down all the stories she remembered her grandmother telling her as a child. Brink was able to correspond with her grandmother, confirming details and elaborating on stories she had not fully understood. The protagonist, Caddie Woodlawn, is a red-headed eleven-year old growing up on the frontier in Wisconsin between the fall of 1864 and the fall of 1865. In literary terms, Caddie Woodlawn is something like the offspring of Anne of Green Gables and Tom Sawyer, kissing cousins to Laura Ingall Wilder's Little House on the Prairie stories and closely related to Louisa May Alcott's Jo March.

A partial explanation for the enduring popularity of this story is that, while it is interesting for its setting and the history, it is fundamentally a timeless story of growing-up. Caddie is a tomboy and enjoys the adventuresome frontier life she shares with her brothers and scorns the indoor, refined life of her sisters. Her biggest trial and biggest adventure, though, is that of growing up and growing into different expectations of her without losing herself. Some of the dialogue can seem almost hopelessly dated as when Caddie's dad tells her.

"...It's a strange thing, but somehow we expect more of girls than of boys. It is the sisters and wives and mothers, you know, Caddie, who keep the world sweet and beautiful. What a rough world it would be if there were only men and boys in it, doing things in their rough way! A woman's task is to teach them gentleness and courtesy and love and kindness. It's a big task, too, Caddie--harder than cutting trees or building mills or damming rivers. It takes nerve and courage and patience, but good women have those things. They have them just as much as the men who build bridges and carve roads through the wilderness. A woman's work is something fine and noble to grow up to, and it is just as important as a man's....".

But you don't have to read many news articles regarding the breakdown in family structures in the inner cities, teen mothers, irresponsible behavior, etc. to instinctively feel that there is a deeper truth in this dialogue than is comfortable for those of us with a radical egalitarian bent.

Brink is a good example of a certain phenomenon regarding memory. She only has three books still in print, Caddie Woodlawn, Caddie Woodlawn's Family (originally published as Magical Melons, a sequel to Caddie Woodlawn) and The Baby Island. I have not read The Baby Island but have seen commentary from a number of readers. Their comments remind me of an incident a good number of years ago in my management consulting career.

Sally and I attended graduate school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and began our courtship there. In our second year it became our custom to enjoy a Friday or Saturday evening dinner date at one of the Chinese restaurants, let us call it China Heaven, in Chinatown. It was good food at a cheap price, served quickly - all attributes well attuned to the needs of poor and busy grad students.

A few years later, having graduated and entered the field of management consulting, I was fortunate enough to end up with a project for a client in Philadelphia. As was always the case, the first few weeks of the project were pretty hectic. Workplans had to be developed, new staff brought into the project and trained up, client information collected and reviewed, interviews conducted, etc. Every night involved dinner with team members or with the client. After a few weeks things began to settle into a routine and I could carve out a little time to revisit the city and the sites of my student days.

One night I found myself free from any client obligations and with no team members in town. "Perfect" I thought to myself, "I'll go see if China Heaven is still around." Walking around Chinatown in Philadelphia in the early summer evening was a pleasant change of pace. It took a while to find the restaurant again; was it Tenth and Vine? Tenth and Race? Maybe it was Ninth or Eleventh. But soon enough I found it. It looked the same, smelled as I recalled it and the staff still whisked around briskly taking orders and whipping the food to your table almost as soon as you placed your order. I was enjoying this journey down memory lane. However, my first forkful of food told me that my memory had been playing tricks on me. As the song by Meatloaf says "Two out of three ain't bad." The food was cheap and it was served quickly. Sally's company had clearly distracted my attention from the quality.

And so it is with books. There is the story the author writes and then there is the story the reader reads and rarely are they the same. One influences the other and shapes the course for the reader but every reader's experience is to a degree unique based on their circumstances and context of their original reading. How we remember a book is shaped by where we were when we read it, what was going on in our lives, how old we were, etc.

This explains why some books that we loved in our childhoods and go out of our way to make sure our own children have available to read, end up sitting on a shelf never getting read. Our circumstances of our first reading were different and cannot be recreated for them.

Even more disappointing is when we discover that a book which we recall as being of the first order in quality and interest and having had a seminal influence on our thinking, turns out, when you reread it in preparation for giving to your own children, to be pretty improbable to the point of literary lameness.

And so it is with Brink's The Baby Island. The story is that of a couple of young girls (something like eleven and six) shipwrecked on an island along with four babies. They find themselves in the role of adults with responsibility for the welfare of those babies. I have seen numerous comments from parents saying how much they loved this book as a child, how that scenario of child as responsible-adult really clicked with them. But then they indicate that having re-read the story as an adult in preparation to sharing with their own child, they are struck by how improbable and frankly unrealistic the story comes across to an adult's eyes.

While this might be true, it still doesn't mean it doesn't have the power to engage a ten or twelve year-old child. They haven't lived long enough to have an aptitude for probabilities. The whole world is still possible and who can ever forget that child's feeling of longing for the power of adult decision-making so cleverly captured in Dr. Seuss's If I Ran the Zoo. The Baby Island still has the power to enchant; just not the adult.

The final book that has made a residual mark on reading generations, but which lamentably is not in print, is The Pink Motel. This was a favorite of Sally's growing up and she has over the years found a couple of extra copies in used bookstores to share with other young readers, all of whom have loved it. If you see it, nab it and enjoy it.

As her writing career progressed, Brink wrote a handful of books for adults, further children's plays, some poetry and many further children's books. As well-enjoyed as they might have been, none would ever come close to displacing the enduring appeal of Caddie Woodlawn.

Independent Reader

Baby Island by Carol Ryrie Brink Suggested

Caddie Woodlawn by Carol Ryrie Brink and illustrated by Kate Seredy and Trina Schart Hyman Highly Recommended

Caddie Woodlawn's Family (originally Magical Melons: More Stories about Caddie Woodlawn) by Carol Ryrie Brink Recommended

Carol Ryrie Brink Bibliography

The Cupboard Was Bare by Carol Ryrie Brink Play for Children 1928
The Queen of the Dolls by Carol Ryrie Brink Play for Children 1928
Anything Can Happen on the River! by Carol Ryrie Brink Children's Book 1934
Caddie Woodlawn: A Frontier Story by Carol Ryrie Brink Children's Book 1935
Mademoiselle Misfortune by Carol Ryrie Brink Children's Book 1936
Best Short Stories for Children by Carol Ryrie Brink Children's Book 1936
Baby Island by Carol Ryrie Brink Children's Book 1937
All Over Town by Carol Ryrie Brink Children's Book 1939
Lad with a Whistle by Carol Ryrie Brink Children's Book 1941
Magical Melons: More Stories about Caddie Woodlawn by Carol Ryrie Brink Children's Book 1944 (re-released as Caddie Woodlawn's Family) Buffalo Coat by Carol Ryrie Brink Adult's Book 1944
Caddie Woodlawn: A Play by Carol Ryrie Brink Children's Book 1945
Narcissa Whitman: Pioneer to the Oregon Country by Carol Ryrie Brink Children's Book 1945
Lafayette by Carol Ryrie Brink Children's Book 1946
Harps in the Wind: The Story of the Singing Hutchinsons by Carol Ryrie Brink Adult's Book 1947
Minty et Compagnie by Carol Ryrie Brink Children's Book 1948
Stopover by Carol Ryrie Brink Adult's Book 1951
Family Grandstand by Carol Ryrie Brink Children's Book 1952
The Highly Trained Dogs of Professor Petit by Carol Ryrie Brink Children's Book 1953
The Headland by Carol Ryrie Brink Adult's Book 1955
Family Sabbatical by Carol Ryrie Brink Children's Book 1956
The Pink Motel by Carol Ryrie Brink Children's Book 1959
Strangers in the Forest by Carol Ryrie Brink Adult's Book 1959
The Twin Cities (on Minneapolis-St. Paul) by Carol Ryrie Brink Adult's Book 1961
Chateau Saint Barnabe by Carol Ryrie Brink Adult's Book 1962
Snow in the River by Carol Ryrie Brink Adult's Book 1964
Andy Buckram's Tin Men by Carol Ryrie Brink Children's Book 1966
Winter Cottage by Carol Ryrie Brink Children's Book 1968
Two Are Better than One by Carol Ryrie Brink Children's Book 1968
The Bad Times of Irma Baumlein by Carol Ryrie Brink Children's Book 1972
Louly (western) by Carol Ryrie Brink Children's Book 1974
Salute Mr. Washington by Carol Ryrie Brink Play for Children 1976
The Bellini Look by Carol Ryrie Brink Adult's Book 1976
Four Girls on a Homestead by Carol Ryrie Brink Children's Book 1977
Goody O'Grumpity by Carol Ryrie Brink Children's Book 1994
A Chain of Hands by Carol Ryrie Brink Adult's Book

Born in Bombay, India May 29, 1906
Died at sea, January 17, 1964 and buried in Piraeus, Greece

T.H. White, a troubled but productive writer, had a world of experiences upon which to draw and used them to create two enduring masterpieces (The Once and Future King as well as Mistress Masham's Repose) that still enchant children and adults half a century later. Every couple of generations it seems, someone comes along to reinvigorate and reinterpret our collective ancient stories in such a way that they gain new currency and vitality. The Grimm brothers in the early eighteen hundreds, Hans Christian Andersen in the late eighteen hundreds, Pierre and Inga D'Aulaire in the nineteen thirties with the Nordic and Greek Myths, Robert Fagles with the Greek masterpieces, are all landmark collectors and re-interpreters that keep us connected with our accumulated wisdom and learning of the past five thousand years of civilization. T.H. White entered into this select group with his stories based on Sir Thomas Mallory's Morte d'Authur, the Arthurian legends of Britain.

His was a complex and very British life. Born in India at the height of the Raj, White was the son of a police superintendent. His father was apparently an alcoholic, his mother somewhat emotionally distant and unpredictable, and the marriage of his parents catastrophically unstable. Any child of the Raj was already challenged with the prospect of prolonged isolation from parents in India while attending boarding school in England and lodging with distant family or strangers during the holidays. For White, this prospect might have actually been something of a relief. As he related in the biography T.H. White by Sylvia Townsend Warner, "There was a great deal of shooting in the air in those days. I am told that my father and mother were to be found wrestling with a pistol, one on either side of my cot, each claiming that he or she was going to shoot the other, and himself or herself, but in any case, beginning with me. . . . It was not a safe kind of childhood."

At six years of age, T.H. White was sent to live with his maternal grandparents. At fourteen, his parents finally divorced and the same year he began attending Cheltenham College in England. One of the coterie of Public Schools, Cheltenham had a tradition of preparing students for a career in the Army. Between the instability of his childhood and his instinctive revulsion to the discipline and martial ethos of Cheltenham, White sought to carve out a path of achievement for himself through self-reliance, personal excellence and the conquering of personal fears. Describing how this drive for achievement manifested itself, he later said:

"I had to learn to paint even, and not only to paint - oils, art and all that sort of thing - but to build and mix concrete and to be a carpenter and to saw and screw and put in a nail without bending it. Not only did I have to be physically good at things, I had to excel with my head as well as with my body and hands. I had to get a first-class honours with distinction at the University. I had to be a scholar. I had to learn medieval Latin shorthand so as to translate bestiaries."

This personal philosophy of achievement shows up much later in the words of Merlin in The Once and Future King.

"The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then - to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn."

From Cheltenham, White went up to Queen's College, Cambridge from whence he graduated in 1928, and indeed, with a first-class degree with honors in English. Upon graduating, White obtained a position as the head of the English Department at the recently established, Stowe School in Buckinghamshire. He taught here for the next several years.

In 1929, he published his first book, Loved Helen and Other Poems. While he seems to have been reasonably happy teaching at Stowe, White was looking for a way to pursue writing full-time. Through 1935, he published ten volumes of poems and novels for adults. In 1936 he published England Have My Bones (ironically titled given the circumstances of his future demise), a collection of essays and stories recounting his experiences fishing, hunting, and flying. This book somewhat unexpectedly became a national best-seller and finally created the income that would allow him to throw over teaching and take up writing full-time.

He settled in the vicinity of Stowe in a game keeper's cottage. Despite having written his thesis at Cambridge on Sir Thomas Malory's Morte d'Arthur, White had never actually read the book. As he relates in a letter to a friend cited in Warner's biography,

"Do you remember I once wrote a thesis on the Morte d'Arthur? Naturally I did not read Malory when writing the thesis on him, but one night last autumn I got desperate among my books and picked him up in lack of anything else. Then I was thrilled and astonished to find (a) that the thing was a perfect tragedy, with a beginning, a middle, and an end implicit in the beginning, and (b) that the characters were real people with recognizable reactions which could be forecast. Anyway, I somehow started writing a book. It is not a satire. Indeed, I am afraid it is rather warm-hearted - mainly about birds and beasts. It seems impossible to determine whether it is for grown-ups or children. It is more or less a kind of wish-fulfillment of the things I should like to have happened to me when I was a boy."

In 1938 this was published as, The Sword in the Stone, the first in the King Arthur tetralogy. Because it is a convoluted tale, it is best to grab the nettle and describe the surprisingly loopy publishing sequence of what has been described as a trilogy and a tetralogy. The Sword in the Stone was published as a stand-alone book in 1938 and was followed in 1939 by The Witch in the Wood (which was later republished under a different title, The Queen of Air and Darkness) and finally, in 1940 by The Ill Made Knight.

White had planned to write two further books in this series. The Candle in the Wind was to be the final story based on Malory's original work and then White intended a fifth and final volume to bring his own conclusion to the Arthurian sequence. The Candle in the Wind was completed in the early forties but by then, of course, Britain was fighting for her life as World War II engulfed the world. White had extensive discussions with his publishers but due to the war and paper shortages, the whole project was set aside and The Candle in the Wind remained unpublished.

In the 1950's, White returned to his original trilogy of books, lightly rewrote them and then integrated them with the fourth, final and still unpublished book deriving from Morte d'Arthur, Candle in the Wind and published the resulting single book as The Once and Future King in 1958. The fifth book, of his own devising, was discovered by the University of Texas among his papers and was released in 1977 as The Book of Merlyn.

The Arthurian legends have always been popular but T.H. White, with The Once and Future King gave them a whole new life and impetus. The Once and Future King was the book on which Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe in turn wrote the Broadway musical Camelot which then spawned the movie of the same name with Richard Burton and Vanessa Redgrave; all adding fuel to the revivifying Arthurian fire.

And what was it that White did that was so effective? It is a little hard to say exactly what one thing there was that made the difference. The Sword in the Stone is essentially a prequel to Malory's Morte d'Arthur telling the adventures of Arthur as a young boy and apprentice, learning to become a king and a warrior from Merlin. As part of his training, Merlin transforms him into a hawk, a badger, a fish, etc.; his experiences as each creature teaching him a different perspective on the world, and a greater appreciation of the different experiences of life. The Sword in the Stone is written in a relatively light-hearted and humorous fashion and serves as a hook into a much broader, deeper, and as it progresses, darker story. It serves in relation to the later books much as Tolkien's Hobbit does with The Lord of the Rings.

One of the things that White does quite well is to stay close to the original stories as told by Mallory while at the same time making them new. He introduces a couple of new characters that give some greater scope for action in the stories but they are not obtrusive nor do they hijack the tales away from their original intent. White also uses an unusual device to link a present day child to the medieval era. The device White uses is anachronism and he introduces this by having Merlin being born in modern times and growing old backwards into time. Merlin therefore already knows about the future and repeatedly alludes anachronistically to current day circumstances impossible to know in the Middle Ages. White is not heavy handed with this technique but it certainly connects with a young adult reader.

Part of the attraction is also that the series grows with the child. A precocious reader can certainly enjoy it as young as ten or twelve but The Sword in the Stone can also be a good book to read to a child that loves words, humor, action and an element of fantasy. However, as the child grows, so too do the elements of seriousness and importance in the books - they can stay engaged. The stories are still exciting and White, based in part on his practical living-on-the-land skills, does a marvelous job of evoking an ancient time and style of living much closer to the land and the boundary of wildness. As they progress, the stories powerfully lay out moral and philosophical issues for a child (or adult) to mull over, not necessarily ever thinking of them in those dry terms.

The other aspect that feeds their continuing relevance is that the themes with which White deals -war, loyalty, honor, betrayal - all remain of primal appeal, particularly to a young adults testing their knowledge and their beliefs. These are great books for a teenager to be reading. But as with any great book, these components of the story are only present on reflection; they don't stand as crude messages in the story itself which roars along at its own exciting pace. Given that the core issue with which Arthur and, in turn, White is wrestling is the question of the role of war, force and coercion, these books are immensely topical.

So, what makes it so good? Great writing and description, strong plot, subtle conceptual material attuned to a young person's thoughts, plenty of action but also with plenty of behavioral and emotional tension. There is something for everyone to enjoy and something for everyone to learn.

In addition to The Once and Future King, White also wrote another, very imaginative and clever, book, Mistress Masham's Repose. Not as weighty as the Arthurian stories end up being, it is none-the-less a very engaging tale. The premise is that a number of Lilliputians from Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels actually returned to England with Lemuel Gulliver and escaped into the grounds of an ancestral estate, establishing an isolated colony away from the eyes and ears of humans. They are there discovered by Maria, a ten year-old orphan, come to live on the estate with a malevolent governess and a cruel guardian who is also the local vicar.

White wrote a couple of dozen books for children and adults during his life with another half-dozen published posthumously. The late fifties and early sixties were marked by increasing prosperity from both his books and then the Camelot musical and, later, the film. With the increasing popularity of his books in the USA and then his involvement with the production of the Camelot, White came to America in 1963-64 for a lecture tour. Having completed the lecture circuit and writing a book (published posthumously as America At Last: The American Journal of T.H. White) White was returning to England, via a lengthy tour of the Mediterranean.

He was en route from Lebanon to Greece when he was discovered the morning of January 17, 1964, dead in his cabin, Room 109, of heart disease. He is buried in Peraeus, Greece under the epitaph "Author who, from a troubled heart, delighted others, loving and praising this life."

Young Adult

Mistress Masham's Repose by T. H. White and illustrated by Fritz Eichenberg Highly Recommended

The Book of Merlyn by T. H. White Suggested

The Goshawk by T. H. White Suggested

The Once and Future King by T. H. White Highly Recommended

The Sword in the Stone by T. H. White and illustrated by Dennis Nolan Highly Recommended

T.H. White Bibliography

Loved Helen and Other Poems by T.H. White 1929
The Green Bay Tree; or The Wicked Man Touches Wood by T.H. White 1929
Dead Mr. Nixon by T.H. White and Ronald McNair Scott 1931
They Winter Abroad: A Novel by T.H. White 1932
First Lesson: A Novel by T.H. White 1932
Darkness at Pemberley by T.H. White 1932
Farewell Victoria by T.H. White 1933
Earth Stopped; or Mr. Marx's Sporting Tour by T.H. White 1934
Gone to Ground: A Novel by T.H. White 1935
Song through Space and Other Poems by T.H. White 1935
England Have My Bones by T.H. White 1936
Burke's Steerage; or The Amateur Gentleman's Introduction to Noble Sports and Pastimes by T.H. White 1938
The Sword in the Stone by T.H. White 1938
The Witch in the Wood by T.H. White 1939
The Ill-Made Knight by T.H. White 1940
Mistress Masham's Repose by T.H. White and illustrated by Fritz Eichenberg 1946
The Elephant and the Kangaroo by T.H. White 1947
The Age of Scandal: An Excursion through a Minor Period by T.H. White 1950
The Goshawk by T.H. White 1951
The Scandalmonger by T.H. White 1952
The Book of Beasts: A Translation from a Latin Bestiary of the 12th Century by T.H. White 1954
The Master: An Adventure Story by T.H. White 1957
The Once and Future King by T.H. White 1958
The Godstone and the Blackymor by T.H. White and illustrated by Edward Ardizzone 1959
America at Last: The American Journal of T. H. White by T.H. White 1965
The White/Garnett Letters by T.H. White 1968
The Book of Merlyn: The Unpublished Conclusion to The Once and Future King by T.H. White 1977
A Joy Proposed by T.H. White 1980
The Maharajah and Other Stories by T.H. White 1981
Letters to a Friend: The Correspondence between T. H. White and L. J. Potts by T.H. White 1982

Not quite a one trick pony but definitely lots of ponies with one trick. Walter Farley, author of a series of Black Stallion books, started out as a young boy loving horses, reading and writing. He then managed to make a living by doing what he loved the most - writing stories about horses so that he could afford to have his own stud farm and read to his heart's content.

As with any longstanding favorite, the Black Stallion stories have been subjected to a number of criticisms: they follow the same formula story-to-story; they overemphasize a fast-paced plot and have little in terms of character development and setting, social characterizations are dated; yada, yada, yada.

Who are you going to believe, the critics or the kids' reading eyes? Series book have always had an uncertain position in the canon of children's books. As Charlotte S. Huck and Doris Young Kuhn noted in Children's Literature in Elementary School

"Little character development, stereotypes, lack of imagery in writing, trite or stilted dialogue, and failure to develop values do characterize many of the series books."

Their characterization was not directed at Farley's Black Stallion series but at series in general: The Bobbsey Twins, The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew; the Berenstain Bears, etc. They may not necessarily be all that popular with literary critics but parents and librarians recognize the merit of series and the particular role that they can play.

You read and read to your kids. Then you help them across that bridge where they are beginning to read along with your reading until they reach that other side where they are able to read for themselves. Then your paths begin to diverge. You may still get to read to them every now and then but more and more they are reading to themselves and picking for themselves what they wish to read and when they are going to read it. Regretful as we might be as a parent (we all cherish that time of self-created security and intimacy, snuggled up together, sharing a story), it is none-the-less a great and necessary accomplishment.

But this is also a delicate juncture in time. That point where they feel themselves free to read what they like but still are not accustomed to figuring what it is that they do like. They also are sailing in those treacherous shallows where they have mastered the skill of reading but are not fully comfortable in the free flow of reading. They no longer have picture clues to help them out. This is where series books really come into their own.

The central redeeming features of a series are in a way exactly that which is so often criticized - they are reliable and predictable. Reliable in the sense that, if you liked one, you are quite likely to enjoy the rest. For a child making their first choices of what to read, choosing the next in the series they enjoy is a reasonably low risk proposition. They are likely to roll along, enjoy it and feel even more confident in their choices next time.

Series books are also predictable, but in a positive sense. While the child is still teetering on that cusp between deciphering words and fluid reading, series books give them a known structure within which to read, thereby reducing uncertainties. They know the protagonist, they know the likely direction of the story, they know the environment in which the action takes place. All these things that they already know take the place of pictures; they can use their knowledge of the series to infer the meaning of new words. It is much easier to build one's confidence in reading with a half known story than with an unknown story.

The trick then becomes to feed the child's interests so that they continue to build the habit and love of reading. Independent reading comes anywhere from roughly six to ten years of age. Particularly at the upper end, a child is old enough to also begin having significant other demands on her time - playing with friends, school work, sports, computers, etc. Soon after that there is then the distraction of the opposite sex.

TTMD certainly can help find the books most likely to sustain your child's interests but one of the most sure-fire reinforcements in this period of transition and distraction, when the habit of reading is not yet fully formed, is to find a series, preferably one with many installments. Our first two readers have always read quickly and read a lot. For us, and for them, series books were a wonderful way of stoking that reading fire - there was always another book to put in their hands which they were most likely going to enjoy.

Our third reader though is a classically at-risk reader. The weather is nice and the outdoors beckons: Nice day for bicycling; Can I have Joey over to play, etc. Not too long after he began his independent reading, he found the Hardy Boys - a series of some thirty or forty books. These provided a great security net; he always had one secreted about his person, in his school back-pack or in his school locker. He has now moved on to Westerns. Particularly with Louis L'Amour, there is a reasonably inexhaustible supply of books that holds his interest for the duration. He continues to sample other books, but he always has a series book to pick up whenever he wants reading entertainment. More importantly, the fascination of those books in a series is keeping him in the habit of reading.

Series don't have to be great literature. They don't have to meet all the criteria for fine writing. As long as the book holds their interest, provides enjoyment, and keeps them in the habit of reading, series books have performed a great service.

Walter Farley wrote some thirty-four books starting with Black Stallion featuring a shipwrecked race horse, Black Stallion, and his young trainer Alec Ramsay. Of the thirty-four books Farley wrote, thirty-two were about horses. Of those thirty-two about horses, twenty-six were about Black Stallion, his children and his rivals. Astonishingly, twenty-two of his titles are still in print. Given the publication dates of his books, the mean publication date was 1962, almost 50 years ago. So 65% of the books he ever wrote are still in print nearly half a century later. Only 45% of the books published fifty years ago that won any of the major prizes (Caldecott, Newbery, Horn Book Fanfare, Greenaway, Carnegie and Bank Street) are still in print. Even though they didn't win any prizes, the Black Stallion books clearly have an appeal and durability exceeding what were thought to be the great books of that year.

What were the life circumstances that led to writing books of such enduring popularity? Focus and persistence are probably the answers. Walter Farley was born in Syracuse, New York, June 26, 1915. Growing up in Syracuse, Farley was a noted athlete but his real interests lay with horses. Very fortunately for him, an uncle who had been living out west returned to Syracuse and opened a horse training stable and Farley spent much of his childhood at his uncle's stables helping to train jumpers, trotters, and pacers.

With the ending of Prohibition, Farley's father took up his former occupation of managing hotel restaurants/bars and returned to New York City. Farley finished his high school education in New York and then at Mercerburg Academy in Pennsylvania. In his senior year, dissatisfied with the horse books he was reading, Farley began writing his own story about a horse.

Moving on to Columbia University, he was encouraged to further develop this story as part of his classroom assignments. He graduated in 1941 and that same year, despite being counseled by an editor that he could never make a living as a children's author, published his first book - Black Stallion .

Farley used the advance on Black Stallion to undertake travels around the world. Meanwhile fan mail piled up as Black Stallion attracted the attention of young readers. Returning to the US in 1942, Farley published his second book, Larry and the Undersea Raider, and then joined the US Army, serving in the Fourth Armored Division and then as a reporter for the Army news magazine, Yank. He was demobilized in 1946.

In his last year in the Army, he completed the second Black Stallion book, Black Stallion Returns which was published in 1945, the year he was also married. Once demobilized in 1946, Farley moved to Pennsylvania with his wife, bought a farm and set himself up to write and raise and train horses. He produced a new book virtually every year for the next two and half decades. In his later years he also bought a house in Florida and started dividing his time between there and the horse farm.

All the Black Stallion books are some variation on the Black Stallion, his off-spring, his history, his rivalries with other race horses. While the later stories began to take on greater depth and sophistication over time, they usually boil down to an adventure set in the context of preparing for a race, training, resolving some training or temperament issue on the part of the horse, and then finally the thrill of the race itself. The stories are characterized as being strong on plot and narrative pace and relatively light, (particularly in the early books) on setting and character development.

Compared to other horse book series, such as Anna Sewell's Black Beauty and Marguerite Henry's Misty of Chincoteague series, Black Stallion , with its action and narrative pace, holds greater interest to young boy readers than the others.

Farley did write other stories such as the aforementioned Larry and the Undersea Raider, a World War II adventure story; The Great Dane; Thor a story about a dog, and Man o'War an historical fiction rendering of a famous race horse. Other than that, horses were pretty much it and that was pretty much all it needed to be. Children loved the stories then and they love them still. Give Black Stallion a try. With any luck it might grab your child's attention and then they will have a couple of dozen more books to enjoy and provide an alternative to life's many other distractions.

Independent Reader

Little Black, a Pony by Walter Farley and illustrated by Baje Whitethorne Suggested

Man O' War by Walter Farley Suggested

Son of the Black Stallion by Walter Farley Highly Recommended

The Black Stallion by Walter Farley Highly Recommended

The Black Stallion Adventures! by Walter Farley Recommended

The Black Stallion and Flame by Walter Farley Recommended

The Black Stallion and Satan by Walter Farley Recommended

The Black Stallion and the Girl by Walter Farley Recommended

Black Stallion Challenged by Walter Farley Recommended

The Black Stallion Mystery by Walter Farley Recommended

The Black Stallion Returns by Walter Farley Recommended

The Black Stallion Revolts by Walter Farley Suggested

The Black Stallion's Blood Bay Colt by Walter Farley Recommended

The Black Stallion's Courage by Walter Farley Recommended

The Black Stallion's Filly by Walter Farley Suggested

The Black Stallion's Ghost by Walter Farley Suggested

The Black Stallion's Sulky Colt by Walter Farley Suggested

The Horse Tamer by Walter Farley Suggested

The Island Stallion by Walter Farley and illustratd by Keith Ward Suggested

The Island Stallion Races by Walter Farley Suggested

The Island Stallions Fury by Walter Farley Suggested

The Young Black Stallion by Walter Farley Suggested

Walter Farley Bibliography

The Black Stallion by Walter Farley and illustrated by Keith Ward 1941
Larry and the Undersea Raider by Walter Farley and illustrated by P. K. Jackson 1942
The Black Stallion Returns by Walter Farley and illustrated by Harold Eldridge 1945
Son of the Black Stallion by Walter Farley and illustrated by Milton Menasco 1947
The Island Stallion by Walter Farley and illustrated by Keith Ward 1948
The Black Stallion and Satan by Walter Farley and illustrated by Milton Menasco 1949
The Blood Bay Colt by Walter Farley and illustrated by Milton Menasco 1950
The Island Stallion's Fury by Walter Farley and illustrated by Harold Eldridge 1951
The Black Stallion's Filly by Walter Farley and illustrated by Milton Menasco 1952
The Black Stallion Revolts by Walter Farley and illustrated by H. Eldridge 1953
Big Black Horse by Walter Farley and illustrated by P. K. Jackson 1953
The Black Stallion's Sulky Colt by Walter Farley and illustrated by H. Eldridge 1954
The Island Stallion Races by Walter Farley and illustrated by Eldridge 1955
The Black Stallion's Courage by Walter Farley and illustrated by Allen F. Brewer Jr. 1956
The Black Stallion Mystery by Walter Farley and illustrated by Mal Singer 1957
The Horse-Tamer by Walter Farley and illustrated by James Schucker 1958
The Black Stallion and Flame by Walter Farley and illustrated by H. Eldridge 1960
Little Black; a Pony by Walter Farley and illustrated by J. Schucker 1961
Man o' War by Walter Farley and illustrated by Angie Draper 1962
Little Black Goes to the Circus by Walter Farley and illustrated by J. Schucker 1963
The Black Stallion Challenged! by Walter Farley and illustrated by A. Draper 1964
The Horse That Swam Away by Walter Farley and illustrated by Leo Summers 1965
The Great Dane; Thor by Walter Farley and illustrated by Joseph Cellini 1966
The Little Black Pony Races by Walter Farley and illustrated by J. Schucker 1968
The Black Stallion's Ghost by Walter Farley and illustrated by A. Draper 1969
The Black Stallion and the Girl by Walter Farley and illustrated by A. Draper 1971
Walter Farley's Black Stallion Books by Walter Farley 1979
The Black Stallion Picture Book by Walter Farley 1979
How to Stay out of Trouble with Your Horse by Walter Farley and illustrated by Tim Farley 1981
The Black Stallion Returns: A Storybook Based on the Movie by Walter Farley and illustrated by Stephanie Spinner 1982
The Black Stallion Legend by Walter Farley 1983
The Black Stallion: An Easy-to-Read Adaptation by Walter Farley and illustrated by Sandy Rabinowitz 1986
The Black Stallion Beginner Book by Walter Farley 1987
The Young Black Stallion by Walter Farley 1989

Mary Norton wrote twelve books over thirty-nine years, all of them well received both critically and from the reading public as reflected in her sales. Her life is a lens into England of the nineteen hundreds, capturing a number of little-seen nooks and crannies. She is most famous for her Borrowers series, as well as the The Magic Bed-Knob and Bonfires and Broomsticks which were later consolidated into a single story, Bed-Knob and Broomstick. Reflecting the enduring popularity of these stories, all of these books have been made into movies (several versions), theatrical plays, radio programs and TV series.

Mary Norton, nee Pearson was born December 10, 1903 in London, England but grew up in Worcestershire, in the charmingly named town of Leighton Buzzard. She was the youngest of five children and the only girl. Cedars House was your classic English Georgian home, reminiscent of the Uncle's house in The Chronicles of Narnia or the home in The Secret Garden, replete with history and rooms and wings and space for children to build their imaginary worlds. As Norton, a keen dramatist, describes her childhood plays in Third Book of Junior Authors:

It was a house very like that around which the Borrowers' story was written, rambling enough to escape for hours on end from grown-up supervision. Privacy for some reason had to be assured; we never acted our plays to adult audiences, we never rehearsed them - nor, in those days had we ever seen a professional performance. Our theatre was indeed the "living theatre," an added dimension born of moment.

Deserted bedrooms were enchanting places - away from the watchful eyes of those supposed to be in charge of us - they seemed to us like "foreign parts." Those were the days of "airing" mattresses. Small figures, flitting secretly along dark passages, would pause with stealth and open a closed door and there - oh joy of joys! - would be a sudden warmth, shadows of firelight on the ceiling and the whisper of living coals.

Round the fire, propped up against chairs, dragged up desks or ottomans, great sagging mattresses stood on their sides like screens, cooking gently in the steady glow; there would be a smell of hot flock and warm horsehair - a cave of heat and light amid the alien shadows. In no time at all pillows, bereft now of their linen covers, would be gathered into a nest and there we would sit, our backs to the hot ticking, telling our stories and arranging our plays. Sometimes, if we were lucky, there would be biscuits in a canister on a table beside the bed, leftovers from a previous guest. Many a stirring drama was acted out within that charmed half-circle, with a coal fire for footlights and shadows for the wings. On fine days, in the garden, we had yew hedges for a backdrop, and dark, shrubbery tunnels for our exits and our entrances.

Norton was educated in convent schools and then moved on to secretarial school and later into the workforce as a secretary. This was clearly not a positive direction for her and, on being fired for errors in her book-keeping, she decided to pursue her real love, the theatre. Through introductions provided by a playwright who was a patient of her father's, she was able to join the theatre school at the Old Vic and spent two intensely happy years moving from student to understudy of some of the famous thespians of the period.

In 1926 she married a long time friend, Robert Norton. Robert Norton was the son of one of those old Anglo-Portuguese families of whom no one has heard but who are the living legacy of Britain's many centuries of sailing, trading and empire building. I came across the story of the Anglo-Portuguese twenty or so years ago, but have never seen much written about them. Apparently back in the 1700's wine from the Douro Valley began to be shipped through the Portuguese port of Oporto into England. Initially there was a high spoilage rate which was addressed by fortifying the wine with Brandy - this particular style of fortified wine then becoming known as Port.

The English shipping magnates and wine merchants began settling in Portugal to look after their investments and vineyards but remained English in language and customs. This has to some extent continued up until today though I have never seen any numbers as to how many families are involved and how many still live in Portugal, but remain English citizens. Just one more of those fascinating little minor details littered through the garden of English history.

Riccardo Orizio wrote a wonderful little book some years ago, Lost White Tribes, telling the story of those remnant European populations scattered across the globe in the post-colonial world: the descendants of ancient Dutch families in Sri Lanka (Ceylon); the Welsh in Patagonia, Argentina; the Anglo-Indian descendants in scattered settlements across India; the Mennonite settlers in Belize, etc.

The Nortons married in 1926 and moved to Portugal where they lived a wonderful expatriate life. Over the next few years they were blessed with four children, two boys and two girls. They then suffered a number of setbacks with the Great Depression wiping out Norton's wealth. With the outbreak of World War II, Robert Norton joined the British Navy as a gunner and Mary Norton moved back to Britain with the children. She found a job in 1941 with the wartime British Purchasing Mission and moved with the children to New York for two years.

Money was tight and Norton turned to writing to try and help make ends meet, initially writing articles for the American women's magazine market which were later collected and published posthumously in 1998 as The Bread and Butter Stories (as in, written to put bread and butter on the table). She also wrote her first book, The Magic Bed-knob; or How to Become a Witch in Ten Easy Lessons which was published in 1943.

The Magic Bed-Knob was immediately recognized, even amidst the turmoil of a World War, as a classic in the making by the reviewer, E.L. Buell who wrote "No one can tell for certain when a classic is born - but this story has all the makings of one." The Magic Bed-Knob was followed four years later in 1947 by its sequel, Bonfires and Broomsticks. These two stories were then consolidated and rewritten as a single book by Norton in 1957 and became the famous Bed-Knob and Broomstick. It is this version on which the famous Disney movie is based.

In The Magic Bed-Knob there are virtually all of the hallmarks of all of Norton's subsequent writings: strong plot, character development and wonderfully detailed setting set in the context of evocative old English houses and combining both adventure and one single element of fantasy that is so strongly developed that it becomes believable to a child but remains almost understated.

The Magic Bed-Knob involves a English spinster character of certain years, Miss Price, who has, in a brisk and efficient nanny-like way, decided to become a witch. Not a wicked witch mind you, a deficit of evil being part of her Achilles heel. No just an amateur enthusiast finding her way into a number of accidental adventures as she learns the arts of witchcraft. In fact it is through one such mishap, falling off her broomstick and injuring her ankle, that she becomes acquainted with the three Wilson children next door who are visiting their aunt. The children become tangled up in the adventures of Miss Price and her co-conspirators.

Norton returned to Britain in before the end of the war. Her eyes were injured in a V-2 rocket attack but fortunately her eyesight was restored by an operation.

In 1952, Norton published her next major book, The Borrowers. It was, as with her previous books, immediately recognized as a classic, lauded by critics and taken up by children and parents with equal enthusiasm. It won the 1953 Carnegie Medal.

Like Bed-Knob and Broomstick, The Borrowers is also set in an old English house. This time however, the fantasy is based not on magic but on the existence of one of the few remaining families of tiny people, the Borrowers. The Clock family (consisting of father, Pod Clock, mother, Homily Clock and daughter, Arrietty Clock) live below the floor boards in an old house, borrowing what they need from the "human beans." They remain out of sight and unobtrusive until one day Pod is seen by the young boy resident in the house, recuperating from rheumatic fever - and then their adventures begin.

As with Bed-Knob and Broomstick, there is a gripping plot, wonderful character development and sharp description. Norton's description of the world as seen by creatures only six inches in height is so believable that it almost hides the fact that this is fantasy. The fact that the Clock's have always lived in an environment where they are at the mercy of the whims of almost everything else makes their world view strikingly familiar to children.

Norton eventually wrote six Borrowers stories in all: The Borrowers, The Borrowers Afield, The Borrowers Afloat, The Borrowers Aloft, Poor Stainless: A New Story About the Borrowers, and The Borrowers Avenged. Unlike many other series where the quality of the story either declines or becomes very spotty after the first book, the Borrowers series has a remarkable consistency and persistent quality through the entire saga.

Norton only wrote one other book, Are All the Giants Dead?, written while she lived in Ireland in the 1950's. Norton divorced her first husband in the 1960's and married Lionel Bonser in 1970. She moved a number of times in her later years, eventually settling in Devonshire where she passed away August 29, 1992. In 2007, the Carnegie Medal judges, to mark the 70th anniversary of the award, selected ten books as the most important children's books of the past seventy years; The Borrowers was one of those ten.

Independent Reader

Bed-Knob and Broomstick by Mary Norton and illustrated by Erik Blegvad Highly Recommended

The Borrowers by Mary Norton and illustrated by Beth and Joe Krush Highly Recommended

The Borrowers Afield by Mary Norton and illustrated by Beth and Joe Krush Highly Recommended

The Borrowers Afloat by Mary Norton and illustrated by Beth and Joe Krush Highly Recommended

The Borrowers Aloft by Mary Norton and illustrated by Beth and Joe Krush Recommended

The Borrowers Avenged by Mary Norton and illustrated by Beth and Joe Krush Recommended

Mary Norton Bibliography

The Magic Bed-knob; or How to Become a Witch in Ten Easy Lessons by Mary Norton 1943
Bonfires and Broomsticks by Mary Norton 1947
The Borrowers by Mary Norton and illustrated by Beth and Joe Krush 1952
The Borrowers Afield by Mary Norton and illustrated by Beth and Joe Krush 1955
Bed-knob and Broomstick by Mary Norton 1957
The Borrowers Afloat by Mary Norton and illustrated by Beth and Joe Krush 1959
The Borrowers Aloft by Mary Norton and illustrated by Beth and Joe Krush 1961
The Borrowers Omnibus by Mary Norton and illustrated by Beth and Joe Krush 1966
Poor Stainless: A New Story About the Borrowers by Mary Norton 1971
Are All the Giants Dead? by Mary Norton 1975
Adventures of the Borrowers, four volumes by Mary Norton and illustrated by Beth and Joe Krush 1975
The Borrowers Avenged by Mary Norton and illustrated by Beth and Joe Krush 1982
The Bread and Butter Stories by Mary Norton 1998

Born April 13, 1902 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Died November 26, 1997 in Ranche Sante Fe, California

Dubbed "the poet laureate of horses," Marguerite Henry, née Marguerite Breithaupt, born the youngest of five children on April 13, 1902 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin is one of the doyennes of equine fiction. She, Anna Sewell (the Black Beauty stories) and Walter Farley (the Black Stallion stories) set the pace for horse stories though they each have a style clearly distinct from one another.

Despite her later career writing about animals, Henry grew up in Milwaukee and never had any pets as a child. Her father was a publisher and encouraged his daughter's interest in reading and writing. His gift to her for Christmas when she was seven years old was a red writing table, fully stocked with pencils, sharpeners, and plenty of foolscap.

In her biographical entry to Junior Book of Authors, Henry relates her particular good fortune as the youngest member of her family:

A curious thing happened one spring to a small flock of ducks owned by a neighbor of ours. Driving rains washed all the duck eggs down the creek - all but one. The lone egg hatched out, and instead of the usual spring sight of several mother ducks each with a trail of little ducklings, there was one yellow duckling with a whole formation of mammas waddling along in wedge shape behind him.

The lone duckling seemed especially favored. He had so many mammas to teach him how to swim and hunt and fish.

In many ways my childhood was similar to the lucky duckling's. I was born into a family of three sisters (two full grown) and a grown brother, so instead of having only one mother to hover over me it seemed as if I had a whole flock of mammas and two papas! If I called out the window to a playmate, "Mamma says I can't go with you today," the answer usually was, "Ask one of your other mammas."

When she was eight, Henry was stricken with rheumatic fever and for a number of years, until she was twelve years old, was unable to attend school. It was during this period that she developed a deep love of reading, particularly stories of animals. She took to writing stories as well and was good enough to sell a story to a magazine for $12 (roughly $250 in today's dollars) when she was only eleven years old.

Having completed high school, Henry then attended the Milwaukee State Teachers College, graduating in 1922. Henry had met her future husband, Sidney Crocker Henry, while on a fishing expedition with her sisters in northern Wisconsin. They married the year following her graduation and remained wed for sixty-four years till his death in 1987.

Sidney Henry was a sales manager and initially his work took them to Philadelphia and then other locations before they finally settled outside of Chicago, close enough to be accessible to his travel needs while allowing Marguerite the lifelong desire to have a place where she might have animals.

From the start of their married life, Sidney Henry encouraged Marguerite to spread her literary wings, particularly recommending when they were in Philadelphia that she try and sell some of her stories to The Saturday Evening Post. Her initial work was accepted and ultimately led to a series of assignments and later, her publication in other national magazines such as Reader's Digest, Forum, and Nation's Business.

Despite earning a living as a writer for magazines, Henry longed to write books and eventually decided to focus on children's books. When they moved to the Chicago area, Henry took the opportunity to begin to concentrate on writing a book. Her first effort, Auno and Tauno, was published in 1940 and received reasonably well. Auno and Tauno is based on tales from Finland she heard exchanged between a couple of Finnish friends.

In 1941 she published eight books in a series put out by Albert Whitman. These were "travel" books introducing children to countries such Argentina, Brazil, and Canada. They were illustrated by the famous illustrator, Kurt Weise (see Featured Author essay of February 3rd, 2008).

During World War II, Henry continued writing, putting out a sequence of books, all either animal stories or travel stories. In 1945, she authored Robert Fulton: Boy Craftsman, in the immensely successful and long running Childhood of Famous Americans series (still in print today).

More critically though, in 1945, after two decades of writing, she published her first break-through success, Justin Morgan had a Horse which received a Newberry Honor Award. Justin Morgan set a recognizable pattern which Henry followed in many of her later successful books. Following her love of animals and horses in particular, Henry had come across the history of the origins of the Morgan breed of horses and turned it into a lightly fictionalized story.

Most of Henry's best books are about horses with cats, dogs, burros and even a bird thrown in to leaven the mix a bit. While most of her books are fictional, the best among them are historical fiction as was the case with Justin Morgan had a Horse. In fact, Henry was noted for the extent of research she invested in understanding the actual history of the story before she ever set pen to paper. In this habit, she was akin to her near contemporary Lois Lenski (Featured Author, July 13, 2007).

As she was completing the manuscript for Justin Morgan, Henry began casting around for an illustrator that could do justice to her text and who shared a similar love of horses. On a visit to a bookstore one day, she came across a book called Flip which was the debut story about a horse named Flip from author/illustrator, Wesley Dennis. As she later said, "This artist saw beyond hide and hair and bone. You could see that he understood and loved animals, that he was trying to capture their spirit, personality and expression."

Henry contacted Dennis and he indicated he would be delighted to illustrate Justin Morgan. Thus began one of those career relationships in which author and illustrator are inextricably linked to one another and where the text or the illustrations in isolation of each other are inconceivable. As in music where you have Roger and Hammerstien and Lerner and Lowe, in children's literature you have A.A. Milne with E.H. Shepard in the Winnie the Pooh books; Laura Ingalls Wilder with Garth Williams in the Little House on the Prairie series; and Mary Norton with Beth and Joe Krush in the Borrowers series. Virtually all of Henry's subsequent books were illustrated by Dennis until his death in 1966.

In 1947, Henry published the first of what was to become a series of books, Misty of Chincoteague, another Newberry Honor winner. As with Justin Morgan, the Misty story had its basis in real life. Henry's editor happened to attend the annual Pony Penning Day on Assateague Island (one of the Virginia barrier islands) in 1945 and learned of its interesting history. According to local legend, Spanish horses had swum ashore from a shipwreck early in the Virginia colonies' history and had bred in the wild. The adjacent island of Chincoteague was inhabited and it became the custom for the local community to conduct an annual Pony Penning Day in which wild horses were captured and sold to raise funds for local community projects.

Henry's editor suggested she might be interested in developing a story around these events and she and Dennis flew to the island and began the detailed research that led to Misty of Chincoteague which develops the local history and incorporates characters whom she met and interviewed on the island, principally the Beebe family. Over time, Misty of Chincoteague was followed by Sea Star: Orphan of Chincoteague, Misty, the Wonder Pony by Misty Herself, Stormy, Misty's Foal, and Misty's Twilight. After all her research, Henry purchased one of the Chincoteague foals, named it Misty and brought it home to Illinois where it resided for a number of years. Henry later returned Misty to Chincoteague for breeding. For those who do not find it too morbid, Misty passed in 1972 and was taxidermied and is on display on the island at the Beebe Ranch. While I like taking the kids to places associated with stories they have loved, I am not sure that a visit to a stuffed horse is quite the reaffirming experience one might desire. There's no accounting for tastes, though.

The following year, 1948, saw the publication of another well-received classic, King of the Wind, again a lightly fictionalized telling of the origins of one of the three founding studs of the Arabian stallion line of horses. After two Newberry honor awards, King of the Wind was the title for which Henry won the Newberry Medal.

In 1953, Henry published Brighty of the Grand Canyon which is a wonderful tale of loyal and persevering burro.

With fifty-six books published in her lifetime, Henry was a quite prolific author, however, none of her works have any sort of whiff of formula. She simply wrote wonderfully rendered stories about animals which hewed close to historical fact, informed children about animals without anthropomorphizing them, told her stories with plot, narrative tension, adventure, humor and a dose of pathos, and told every story as a unique tale.

While the Misty stories are often categorized as favorites among young girls (and it is true that they are), the writing is so good and the plot, adventures and storyline are so strong that it is unfair to pigeon-hole them into that too-narrow category. These are stories for all children who love to read. They are especially attractive to those who love animals and horses.

Album of Horses by Marguerite Henry and illustrated by Wesley Dennis Suggested

Black Gold by Marguerite Henry and illustrated by Wesley Dennis Suggested

Born to Trot by Marguerite Henry and illustrated by Wesley Dennis Suggested

Brighty of the Grand Canyon by Marguerite Henry and illustrated by Wesley Dennis Highly Recommended

Brown Sunshine of Sawdust Valley by Marguerite Henry and illustrated by Bonnie Shields Suggested

Justin Morgan Had a Horse by Marguerite Henry and illustrated by Wesley Dennis Highly Recommended

King of the Wind by Marguerite Henry and illustrated by Wesley Dennis Recommended

Marguerite Henry Treasury of Horses by Marguerite Henry and illustrated by Wesley Dennis Suggested

Misty of Chincoteague by Marguerite Henry and illustrated by Wesley Dennis Highly Recommended

Misty's Twilight by Marguerite Henry and illustrated by Karen Haus Grandpre Suggested

Mustang, Wild Spirit of the West by Marguerite Henry and illustrated by Robert Lougheed Suggested

San Domingo, The Medicene Hat Stallion by Marguerite Henry and illustrated by Robert Lougheed Recommendation

Sea Star, Orphan of Chintoteague by Marguerite Henry and illustrated by Wesley Dennis Recommended

Stormy, Misty's Foal by Marguerite Henry and illustrated by Wesley Dennis Recommended

Marguerite Henry's Bibliography
Auno and Tauno: A Story of Finland by Marguerite Henry 1940
Dilly Dally Sally by Marguerite Henry 1940
Alaska in Story and Pictures by Marguerite Henry and illustrated by Kurt Weise 1941
Argentina . . . by Marguerite Henry and illustrated by Kurt Weise 1941
Brazil . . . by Marguerite Henry and illustrated by Kurt Weise 1941
Canada . . . by Marguerite Henry and illustrated by Kurt Weise 1941
Chile . . . by Marguerite Henry and illustrated by Kurt Weise 1941
Mexico . . . by Marguerite Henry and illustrated by Kurt Weise 1941
Panama . . . by Marguerite Henry and illustrated by Kurt Weise 1941
West Indies . . . by Marguerite Henry and illustrated by Kurt Weise 1941
Birds at Home by Marguerite Henry 1942
Geraldine Belinda by Marguerite Henry 1942
Their First Igloo on Baffin Island by Marguerite Henry 1943
Boy and a Dog by Marguerite Henry 1944
Little Fellow by Marguerite Henry 1945
Robert Fulton: Boy Craftsman by Marguerite Henry 1945
Justin Morgan Had a Horse by Marguerite Henry and illustrated by Wesley Dennis 1945
Australia . . . by Marguerite Henry and illustrated by Kurt Weise 1946
Bahamas . . . by Marguerite Henry and illustrated by Kurt Weise 1946
Bermuda . . . by Marguerite Henry and illustrated by Kurt Weise 1946
British Honduras . . . by Marguerite Henry and illustrated by Kurt Weise 1946
Dominican Republic . . . by Marguerite Henry and illustrated by Kurt Weise 1946
Hawaii . . . by Marguerite Henry and illustrated by Kurt Weise 1946
New Zealand . . . by Marguerite Henry and illustrated by Kurt Weise 1946
Virgin Islands . . . by Marguerite Henry and illustrated by Kurt Weise 1946
Misty of Chincoteague by Marguerite Henry and illustrated by Wesley Dennis 1947
Benjamin West and His Cat, Grimalkin by Marguerite Henry and illustrated by Wesley Dennis 1947
Always Reddy by Marguerite Henry and illustrated by Wesley Dennis 1947
King of the Wind by Marguerite Henry and illustrated by Wesley Dennis 1948
Sea Star: Orphan of Chintoteague by Marguerite Henry and illustrated by Wesley Dennis 1949
Little-or-Nothing from Nottingham by Marguerite Henry and illustrated by Wesley Dennis 1949
Born to Trot by Marguerite Henry and illustrated by Wesley Dennis 1950
Album of Horses by Marguerite Henry and illustrated by Wesley Dennis 1951
Portfolio of Horses by Marguerite Henry and illustrated by Wesley Dennis 1952
Brighty of the Grand Canyon by Marguerite Henry and illustrated by Wesley Dennis 1953
Wagging Tails: An Album of Dogs by Marguerite Henry and illustrated by Wesley Dennis 1955
Cinnabar: The One O'Clock Fox by Marguerite Henry and illustrated by Wesley Dennis 1956
Black Gold by Marguerite Henry and illustrated by Wesley Dennis 1957
Muley-Ears, Nobody'd Dog by Marguerite Henry 1959
Gaudenzia: Pride of the Palio by Marguerite Henry and illustrated by Lynd Ward 1960
Misty, the Wonder Pony by Misty Herself by Marguerite Henry and illustrated by 1961
All about Horses by Marguerite Henry and illustrated by Wesley Dennis 1962
Five O'Clock Charlie by Marguerite Henry and illustrated by Wesley Dennis 1962
Stormy, Misty's Foal by Marguerite Henry and illustrated by Wesley Dennis 1963
White Stallion of Lipizza by Marguerite Henry and illustrated by Wesley Dennis 1964
Portfolio of Horse Paintings by Marguerite Henry and illustrated by Wesley Dennis 1964
Mustang, Wild Spirit of the West by Marguerite Henry 1966
Dear Readers and Riders by Marguerite Henry 1969
San Domingo: The Medicine Hat Stallion by Marguerite Henry 1972
Pictorial Life Story of Misty by Marguerite Henry 1976
One Man's Horse by Marguerite Henry 1977
The Illustrated Marguerite Henry by Marguerite Henry 1980
Marguerite Henry's Misty Treasury by Marguerite Henry 1982
Our First Pony by Marguerite Henry and illustrated by Rich Rudish 1984
Brighty of the Grand Canyon by Marguerite Henry and illustrated by Wesley Dennis 1987
Misty's Twilight by Marguerite Henry and illustrated by Karen Haus Grandpre 1992
Brown Sunshine of Sawdust Valley by Marguerite Henry and illustrated by Bonnie Shields 1996