Horse Diaries – Cinders

Kate Klimo's Horse Diaries - Cinders is a horse's own account of her life for 8 year olds, told by a grey farm mare who ends up with a name she doesn't deserve.

What happens

Cinders narrates it herself, and she's very good company. She starts as a foal on a prairie farm with two little girls who hang flower garlands round her neck and balance eggs on her back. She learns the harness. She loves the work.

Then the farmer's wife dies, the farm is sold, and Cinders goes with everything else.

Her new owner "never petted unless he could smack, never spoke unless he could yell". He whips her through tree stumps until her heart nearly bursts. Then he takes her to market in a blizzard, gets them lost, and finally hands her the reins and tells her to take him home.

She does it. She runs all night. And in the yard, at dawn, the old man stands up, clutches his chest and pitches forward dead before he hits the ground.

Only Cinders knows that. His sons shove her sideways with a shovel and her hoof lands on him, and from that morning she's Man-Killer.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

The first half is genuinely hard. A mother dies offstage and two children are sent away. Cinders is whipped raw, stabbed with a pitchfork, starved in a rubbish yard until her ribs show, and a drunk man stands at her stall door with a gun and lowers it at the last second. None of it is gratuitous and all of it is on the page. For a child who can't bear animals being hurt, this is not the horse book to pick. For a child who has read Black Beauty and wanted more, it's exactly that, and the second half gives it all back.

What it gives back is Second Chance Farm, where a man named Finn collects animals nobody else wants. A three-legged dog. A blind donkey. A field of retired fire horses who still charge to the fence every time a bell rings, because for a moment they're young again.

Then Chicago, a fire station, a spotted dog who knows the alarm is coming before it goes off, and a summer so hot and dry that the whole city is waiting.

Your reader will finish it knowing what a Percheron is, what a fire horse did all day, and how long a reputation lasts.

What to read next

There's another horse in the library keeping her own record. Lily's own diary is a Welsh pony's, and it starts in the middle of a Pony Club race.