Ponies

Children's Literature - Barbara L. Talcroft

"Meet the Pony!" This "Farm Animals" series has a distinctly personal and almost nostalgic aura: animals and the small farms shown are clean and neat, some buildings are of stone, family members are working—it's definitely not agribusiness! In each volume, ample pages bordered in a design of that animal's footprints offer engaging color photographs like one here of a sunlit Chincoteague pony munching salty beach grass. Ten sections present topics ranging from descriptions of breeds and types through feeding, training, and caring for the animals to life cycles and history. Pony breeds include Exmoor, Shetland, and Welsh; readers will learn that all ponies derive from three breeds of horses that lived 10,000 to 2.5 million years ago in central Asia and Europe. A two-page spread illustrates pony features: manes, eyes, ears, noses, and feet. Caring for ponies involves providing vaccinations, grooming them, and removing stones from their hooves. Future farmers and city kids will be interested to discover that ponies in folklore appear in a Russian fable, "The Humpbacked Horse," and in Irish legends; a short retelling introduces readers to a Native American story of the magical "Mud Pony." For inquiring minds, a short quiz and two recommended books point to further research, while a "Frequently Asked Questions" section answers queries like "How do I bathe my pony?" Unusual for the variety of information presented, the freshness of its graphic appeal, and recognition of the antiquity and traditions of animal husbandry, this series is an exceptional value for its reasonable price.