Saddle Club – The Inside Story: Lisa

Bonnie Bryant's The Inside Story: Lisa is a Saddle Club diary for 9 year olds, packed with stable chores, mix-ups and one borrowed pin that goes missing.

What happens

Lisa Atwood has decided to start writing a diary again. She's read a magazine article about people who save everything, from ticket stubs to their dog's obedience-school certificate, and she wants hers to be a scrapbook too. Stevie thinks it's hilarious. Only Lisa, she says, would set herself homework in the summer holidays.

Then things go badly wrong. Mrs. Reg lets Lisa borrow a gold horse pin with a diamond eye, a wedding present from her husband long ago. A stable cat chases a mouse, Prancer panics in her stall, and by the time the girls sit down at TD's the pin has vanished.

So what do three horse-mad friends do when they can't face Mrs. Reg? They offer to run Pine Hollow for the whole week while she's away, and search every corner as they go. It doesn't exactly go to plan. There's a trail ride with a man Lisa is sure is the French ambassador (he isn't). There's a beginners' class of very tall basketball players on very small ponies. And a paint job ends up partly on a horse called Diablo.

Because it's her diary, you get Lisa's worrying from the inside. She lies awake at eleven o'clock sure she's let everyone down. She's the straight-A, sensible one of the three, so watching her get things wrong is a big part of the fun. Notes and emails pasted between the entries break it up too, like a note from her French teacher she soon wishes she hadn't glued in.

Later entries turn quieter. A letter from her big brother Peter, travelling around Europe, makes Lisa realise she hardly knows him any more. It's a lovely, honest bit about growing up that sits right alongside the stable jokes.

If your reader already loves horses, this is a very cosy way into the Saddle Club friendship. And if they've ever lost something that wasn't theirs, they'll feel every bit of Lisa's panic (that sinking feeling is VERY real).

What to read next

For the same three friends told a different way, try Stevie's own Inside Story. Stevie tells hers in letters to her old friend Dinah, and she's called to the headmistress's office before the first letter is over.