Saddle Club Super Edition 3 – Western Star

Bonnie Bryant's Western Star is the third Saddle Club Super Edition, a Christmas story for 9 year olds about three horse-mad friends and a very short trip out west.

What happens

Stevie, Carole and Lisa have been given the same present by their families. Three days on the Bar None, the dude ranch their friend Kate's family runs, flown out and back by Kate's dad.

Three days, because Christmas falls on the Thursday and everybody wants to be at home for it. They leave on the Sunday and land back in Washington on the Wednesday afternoon.

Then, at Pony Club on the Saturday before they go, Max announces who will lead the Starlight Ride. That's the Christmas Eve trail ride through the woods by lantern light, and it's an honour, and this year it goes to Stevie.

Stevie, who normally gets sent to the head's office rather than honoured, needs somebody to pinch her.

Which means Wednesday now has to go perfectly. There is a storm out west waiting to see about that.

The horse detail is the draw and there's a lot of it. Drill practice with Max calling corrections down the line, toes in, heels down, change your diagonals without being told. Tacking up, cross-tying, grooming three horses in a row so you can talk while you work. A reader who has been near a riding school will recognise every bit of it. One who hasn't will want to be.

The nicest stretch of what I read is a dinner table. Somebody asks what Christmas is actually like at everyone's house, and you get eggs Benedict with the hollandaise scraped off, a German sweet bread called stollen, a menorah two of the guests brought with them, Carole's kinara and the seven candles of Kwanzaa, and Christine's family, who won't open a single present until somebody has told the story of where their people came from.

Nobody explains anything to anybody. They're just at supper, talking. It's lovely.

One line for a parent. Carole lives with her father because her mother died of cancer a few years earlier. It's laid out in a sentence of background early on, and it isn't something that happens in the story.

What to read next

If your reader wants to go back to where the club started, A Summer Without Horses has Stevie sliding out of a tree, three weeks off riding, and a pact with a forfeit none of them can bear to pay.