PBOTD 8th March: Joyce Stranger - Breed of Giants

-
Joyce Stranger was an author who passed me by completely until quite recently. It's probably just as well, as she wrote over 70 animal stories, and my childhood budget was stretched to its limits buying the books I did manage to find. As most of her books are for adults (though two of her horse books, The Wild Ponies (1976) and Midnight Magic (1991) are children's stories) they were shut away from me in the local library, in the adult books I was not allowed to borrow.

Hammond, 1966, first edition, illus David Rook
Breed of Giants (1966), was Joyce Stranger's second book, and followed a story about foxes (The Running Foxes). It was the first of her books about horses: she wrote eleven, and one non fiction title Stranger than Fiction (1984), about girl jockey Elspeth Bryce Smith, paralysed with polio, but who recovered enough to be able to disguise herself and ride as a jockey called John Grey.

Viking, US, 1967
Joyce Stranger based Breed of Giants on a real Shire horse breeder: Jim Gould, of Lymm Shires in Cheshire. Everything described in the book happened to Gould's horses. She described them as "wonderful black animals, that had triumphed over and over again in the shows."

Corgi paperback
The hero of the book, Josh Johnson, breeds Shires, but runs into bad luck. His best horse, who is meant to save the stud, has an accident, and this is followed, as so often in farming, by more disasters. Josh, like most Stranger heroes, is a fighter, and manages to build up his winning strain of horses again.

Corgi paperback
Corgi paperback, 1979
Breed of Giants was first published by Hammond in 1966. It was published in America by Viking in 1967, and I've included that edition here, even though I don't usually include overseas editions, purely because I love the line drawing on this edition. It shows Shires in fiery play, rather than in the more usual static poses one tends to think of Shires in. All three Corgi paperbacks use the standard Shires-at-show pose, although the earliest edition does show a horse who looks rather more interested in taking off, leaving his handler trailing along behind.


~ 0  ~

For more on Joyce Stranger, see her page on my website.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Rollkur and the blue tongue

-
I've been meaning to write about this all week, but reading the exclusive in Horse and Hound about the controversy tipped me over the edge. For my non-horsy readers, rollkur is a training/warming up technique used by some dressage riders. It basically involves riding the horse with its jaw pulled in virtually to its chest, in order to increase suppleness. Patrik Kittel , a Swedish competitor in Odense was videoed riding his horse in this way. If you watch the video , you'll see the horse's tongue hanging out - blue. It takes a while before the rider notices this. When he does, he stops, puts the horse's tongue back in, and carries on. There are two things which bother me about this. Firstly, I am fully aware large sections of the dressage world, and some of its brighest stars, consider rollkur perfectly ok, but the FEI guidelines state this practice should only be for short periods, allowing the horse to rest. Patrick Kittel apparently rode the horse for two hou
Read more

Archibald, don't eat the bedclothes

-
Image
My friend Louise sent me this picture today. It's from a children's book with the rather wince-making title For The Wee Ones. I thought, when I read that (because I read the message before I looked at the picture) that the picture was going to be a typical winsome production from the school of artists who think (or who are paid to think) that the child is a thing sent from God and a blissful thing. They had obviously never met a child, and certainly not mine. I should have known Louise better. The artist responsible for Archibald, don't eat the bedclothes slipped this one past the editors. Just look at the poor, broken Mother Rabbit. She knows she has not the faintest chance of being listened to, and poor thing, she is stooped in the way of a mother to whom this is just the lastest in a long line of horror; with nothing good to come. And Archibald is obviously the spawn of the Devil. Just look at those eyes. He'll have the bed after he's finished the bedclothes
Read more

Dick Sparrow - 40 Horse Hitch, and Neil Dimmock's 46 Percherons

-
Image
Here's a clip of Dick Sparrow driving 40 horses. It's an amazing sight, particularly when the shot changes to show the team from the rear and you get the great incongruity of modern American corporate architecture as a background to the wagon and horses. I love the anticipation in the video: the sense of something amazing being just round the corner is palpable. Thanks to Christina Wilsdon for telling me about this world record 46 Percheron hitch (alas just stills) but you get the idea.
Read more