Books, Mud and Compost. And Horses.

I'm delighted to welcome Sheena Wilkinson to the latest edition of Desert Island Pony Books. Sheena has been described in The Irish Times as 'one of our foremost writers for young people.' Her first three books, including the award-winning Taking Flight and Grounded , all centre round horses, though very much at the gritty, realistic end of the spectrum. Her 2017 novel, Star By Star , published to commemorate female suffrage, isn't horsey but she always manages to sneak a horse in somewhere. Maybe that's why her current trend is for historic fiction -- where it's so much easier to do that!  *** This was HARD! So hard that I had to make rules for myself – otherwise I would have wanted to cheat and bring along, for example, all the Jills instead of picking one. Or I might have filled my island with nothing but K.M.Peyton. So – no series, and only one book per author, which made it even harder in some ways! Sheena and Scarlet

Today's castaway on the desert island where the horse and pony book rule is author Kate Lattey. She's written three series of pony books all set in her native New Zealand, and I admit I do envy their world, which seems so much less constricted than life here in the UK. I really enjoy her books, and you can read my review of  Dare to Dream  and  Dream On . You can follow Kate on her website here , which also gives you a free download of the first in her Pony Jumpers series. Kate's chosen a really interesting set of books – and if you've followed the series so far, you'll be intrigued to see which one she'd throw over the side! *** The five pony books I would choose if I were stuck on a desert island…wow. I have over 100 pony books in my collection, and to choose just five? The concept is almost impossible. There are obvious choices that I’m sure have been mentioned before, many times, by many others – Ruby Ferguson’s entire Jill series and Patricia Le

Christina Wilsdon is the author of some 200 books. She's written about sharks, opossums, birds, and also about that most feared creature of the natural world, the small child, with one title guaranteed to strike fear into anyone who's had anything to do with a child: I Feel Sick. There aren't many animals she hasn't written about, and she's also the author of Horse-Crazy Girls , which would have been right up my street when I was one, which I loved, even though I am now some decades adrift of its target market.   You can read much more about Christina on her website , and I can also highly recommend her blog, Piccallilli Pie , which is an absolute treasure trove of brilliant writing about the natural world. *** Last Hurdle by F.K. Brown I came upon this book as a young girl while stalking the shelves of my local library, which was housed in a cramped portable building. The librarians kindly labeled spines of horse books with a cloth decal bearing a hor

I'm delighted to welcome the next castaway on the desert island where books are allowed. But not many. Linda Newbery has been one of my favourite authors for years: if you haven't read her The Damage Done  or The Nowhere Girl , or The Shell House ,  or Lob ,  you are in for a treat.  Linda's latest book is  The Key to Flambards , which the acute will spot uses the name of a very well-known series indeed: K M Peyton's Flambards. That is because this book tells (with the blessing of K M Peyton) the story of Christina's descendants, Grace Russell, and her mother, who are visiting Flambards for the first time around a century since we left it in Flambards Divided .  I loved it. The more I think about it, the more staggerered I am at how well it weaves together the Flambards we all know with the modern day.  So it will not surprise you to learn who wrote one of Linda's choices ...  Linda Newbery's website . Linda runs the Writers Review blog