Horse Diaries – Lily

Whitney Sanderson's Horse Diaries - Lily is a pony's-eye story for 8 year olds, and the pony telling it REALLY hates to lose.

What happens

Lily belongs to Gwen, a vet's daughter who lives on a hill farm in Wales. It opens at a Pony Club gymkhana over the border in England. There's apple bobbing, a sack race and a flag race, and Lily is desperate to beat her rival, Apricot. Who wouldn't cheer for her?

Then, as the ponies say goodbye, Apricot mentions that the humans are probably going to have a war.

Lily has no idea what that means. So you see it all begin the way a pony would. The radio drones on about the Prime Minister. The family digs a funny tin box into the lawn. And one evening three creatures with huge fly heads come out of the house (it's Gwen and her parents in gas masks, and it's a brilliant moment).

With Pony Club rallies stopped, Gwen starts riding out on her dad's vet calls instead. They meet an old pit pony called Badger, who tells Lily what life was like down the coal mine. On a freezing night Gwen helps deliver triplet lambs in a farmer's barn, still in her stripy pyjamas.

Reading it feels a lot like standing in the stable with Lily. She's very proud of being a strawberry roan (from a distance she looks almost pink), she's hopeless around a bucket of apples and she's very sure she has better manners than the other ponies. They've all got personalities of their own too (Cadfael nibbles everything, and old Huw's joints creak).

A couple of scenes are worth a heads-up. The lambing is quite hands-on, and one lamb isn't breathing at first. It's handled calmly and it ends well, but a squeamish reader might like a warning. Badger's story of the mine is a sad one. And later a girl evacuated from London hits a horse in a temper, which upsets everyone.

If your reader loves animals and is curious about farm life and history, they'll probably find it fascinating. It's full of real detail, from cleaning tack with saddle soap to dried-egg sandwiches.

What to read next

If they want another horse telling her own story, try the Horse Diaries book about Cinders, a big grey farm mare who carries eggs on her back for the two little girls who named her.