Pony Rivers is an orphan boy about 15 years old who loves horses. He is especially interested in working around racehorses, and even more especially, one particular horse, Victory, son of the famous racehorse, Man o’War. So, after the death of his mother, Pony goes to Kentucky in search of the stables where Victory lives. And he gets there just in time to witness the birth of one of Victory’s many offspring, a colt that Pony names Little Vic.

This story is the tale of a boy and the horse he grows to love. Pony is rather obsessed with Little Vic. I grew up around lots of “horse lovers”, and I never did really understand the fascination. However, I can enjoy a good horse book, and Little Vic is that, with a little something extra.

Pony follows Little Vic from owner to owner, believing that Little Vic has the makings of a winning racehorse. Pony works as a stablehand at first, but later when he is separated from Little Vic, who is shipped to a horse farm in Arizona, Pony decides to pursue a career as a jockey so that someday he will be qualified to ride Little Vic in races.

Only on page 107 of a 160 page story do we readers find out something about Pony Rivers that makes this novel more than just another horse and his boy story. I have to believe that the author, Doris Gates, intended the information about Pony not to be revealed until two-thirds of the way through the story, so I won’t spoil the surprise. But such an insightful and beautifully written story, published in 1951, was indeed a surprise.

Another surprise is that the importance of prayer and of knowing the Bible are both woven into the story in a lovely way, and the entire narrative leads to the uprooting of prejudice in one character and to kindness and reconciliation between two of the characters in the book. Little Vic is a good horse story, but it goes deeper than that to show how faith and perseverance and humility can win out in the end.

“The way I see it, Mr. Baker, everybody has got to have some trouble in this world. I just got the feeling I would rather have the kind of trouble Little Vic will pick out for me than any other trouble I can think of. And you know something?” Pony moved so that he could look into the colt’s eyes. ” The way I see it, as long as I can be with Little Vic, nobody can hand me any trouble anyway.”

She decided to begin with the Book of Job. “He had a lot of things to put up with, too,” she told Pony, “and his faith in the goodness of God gave him the strength to bear with every one of them. People like us need a lot of faith to bear some of the things we got too.” She fixed him with her eye. “And faith in something besides horses,” she added as she pushed a pair of glasses onto her broad nose.

A book for horse lovers and for those who just love a good story, Little Vic also has the advantage of being illustrated by Kate Seredy. Little Vic is a winner.

Content considerations: At one point in the story, Pony decks a jockey who mistreats Little Vic. The story also has characters who exhibit racial prejudice, condemned in the story, not condoned, and the African American characters in the book are designated as “colored people”, a commonly accepted term in the 1940’s.

I wrote a post a week or two ago about doll stories, when I was reading some of Rumer Godden’s stories about dolls. Now I’ve found another doll book to add to the list—the 1951 Caldecott Honor book, The Most Wonderful Doll in the World. Poet and author Phyllis McGinley wrote this tale of a girl, Dulcy, with a powerful imagination. In fact, Dulcy’s mother says she has “too much imagination” because Dulcy is always dissatisfied with the dolls she receives as gifts and must imagine them just a little bit different or better.

When Dulcy gets a new doll, Angela, from her friend, the elderly Mrs. Primrose, Dulcy thinks Angela is a fine doll, but she can’t help wishing that Angela’s hair were black instead of yellow. However, when Angela is lost, Dulcy’s longing and imagination transform the missing doll into the most wonderful doll in the world.

I couldn’t find much information about Helen Stone, the illustrator of this little story. She won two Caldecott honors for books upon which she collaborated with Phyllis McGinley. Her other Caldecott honor book is called All Around the Town by Phyllis McGinley, and it seems to be an alphabet book. Helen Stone also illustrated my favorite Phyllis McGInley story, The Plain Princess.

Read more about Phyllis McGinley here.
If you know or find out more about Helen Stone, please leave a comment.

Jan Bloom writes in her authors’ guide, Who Should We Then Read?:

“From her earliest days, Marguerite had a desire to draw and paint. When not yet two years old she experimented with some pastels she found next to a portrait her father was sketching. She knew she must not touch the face so she did a border around it, using every color in the box of pastels. Her parents were stern, but loving. She was scolded but not punished for her artistic expression.”

Marguerite was a professional singer before she married, but after her first three children were born, she began drawing, hoping to become an illustrator. The first drawing she sold was to a Sunday School publication. Her first book, fourteen years later, was Henner’s Lydia, about an Amish girl. Marguerite de Angeli won the Newbery Award for her story of a boy handicapped by polio during the Middle Ages, A Door in the Wall.

I found Just Like David on the shelf in one of the local thrift stores that I frequent, looking for bargain book treasures. I had never heard of this particular de Angeli title, but I knew from looking at the illustrations and sampling the story that it would be good. The book is 122 pages long with nice large print, hardcover and lots of pictures; it’s we would nowadays call a “beginning chapter book”. Just Like David tells the story of a five year old boy, Jeffrey, who wants to go to school like his older brother, David. But Jeffrey is not old enough to attend school in Pennsylvania where his family lives. However, when the family decides to move to Ohio for Father to take a new job, there’s a chance, just a little “if”, that Jeffrey might be able to go to school, too, just like David.

Most of the story is about the car trip from Pennsylvania to Ohio. It’s quite an adventure for Mother and Father and three small boys (baby Henry is two years old). That the journey takes place in another era (the book was published in 1951) is obvious from the details: no seatbelt, no carseat for Henry, tollgate tickets, and thermos bottles. Some of these details would need to be explained to present day readers or listeners, but it would be fun to read along until you came to an unfamiliar word or phrase and then discuss. Father explains many unfamiliar concepts to David and Jeffrey as they go on their long car trip and then later as they explore their new home and it environs: things like courthouses and county seats and turnpikes and Indian arrow heads and fossils and many other discoveries that the boys make along the way.

Similar to Ms. de Angeli’s other books, Just Like David is a gentle story about a child growing up in a loving family. It might be a little slow for today’s media-fed children, but if Mister Rogers and Carolyn Haywood and Laura Ingalls Wilder are about your speed, Just Like David might be just right, too.

I thought it was a delight, and I learned a new expression: “put your mouth!” I tried to look up this idiom, used several times in the book by Jeffrey, David and their family, on the internet, but I got some rather nasty results and nothing that defined the term as they used it. From context, I think it means something like “unbelievable” or “I’ll be a monkey’s uncle!” Maybe it was something the de Angeli family said or an expression people in the midwest used back in the 1950’s. I rather like it and think I’ll try to revive the saying.

“I have eight of Mrs. de Angeli’s lovely books in my library now, and I’d be pleased as punch to have the rest of them!”
“Put your mouth!”