PBOTD 9th July: Vian Smith - Come Down the Mountain

-
Vian Smith's Come Down the Mountain is a book of which I am extremely fond. It's the story of a girl who's a misfit at school and in her village, but who's brave enough to do what she thinks is right in defiance of her community. There's a thoroughbred horse who lives in a field at the end of the village, who was owned by an eccentric landowner on whom the entire village's livelihoods depend. He dies, and nothing's done with the horse and no one is brave enough to do anything about him, until Brenda decides to act.

Here's the first edition, with cover illustration by Elisabeth Grant. It was published in 1967.


The American edition, published by Doubleday in 1967, doesn't have anything obviously horsey about it at all, but the backward leaning houses seem to suggest the buttoned up refusal of the village to challenge accepted mores.


And here's a reprint, by Viking, which I also like. It was published in 1980. 


And then there's this. If you subtract the terrible horse, the child is rather well done, and the background is good too, but the horse, oh, the horse.



~  0  ~

More on Vian Smith

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