Sunshine Stables: Amina and the Amazing Pony

Olivia Tuffin's Sunshine Stables: Amina and the Amazing Pony is a pony camp story for 7 year olds about a girl who wants to win a little TOO much.

What happens

Amina is spending a week at pony camp, caring for a tiny golden palomino called Nutmeg. Nutmeg is barely eleven hands high and bursting with personality. They're a perfect match.

Then Lainey, who runs the riding school, announces a trial for one place on a showjumping team. Everyone wants it. The girls even make a promise on their lucky horseshoe to stay friends whoever wins.

But Amina wants it more than anyone. Her big sister Prisha is a star gymnast, away competing in Germany. Amina gave up gymnastics after a bad fall and a broken ankle, and she's desperate to prove that ponies were the right choice.

So she starts doing things she knows aren't kind. She doesn't offer to help shy Poppy with her plaits. She fakes a headache to skip the fun games. When the young instructor offers the whole group a turn on her lovely grey horse, Amina keeps quiet and takes it herself.

Have you ever wanted something so badly it made you a bit mean? That's what makes this one special. Amina isn't a baddie. She's a girl who's got herself in a muddle, and your reader will feel every twinge of her guilt.

There's lots of real pony detail too, from plaiting a mane to the dos and don'ts of a cross-country course. The handy-pony games (hooking plastic ducks with a fishing net, pegging socks on a washing line) look brilliant fun. And there's a barefoot water fight in the water jump.

One thing to be ready for. Amina's plan to impress Lainey ends with a fall from Nutmeg and a trip to hospital. It's only bruises, and it's handled calmly, but a nervous new rider might want to talk it over.

Amina's camp friends have had adventures of their own that get a quick mention, but this story works perfectly well by itself. It's a lovely one for a reader who's just starting to get competitive about something they love.

What to read next

If they're after another pony-mad girl, The Pony With No Name begins with Bryony moving to a cottage by the sea, missing her old riding stables and the gymkhana rosette she won there. A gentle heads-up that her dad died six months before the story starts.