Read The Secret Rescuers: The Sea Pony free for 7 days. £7.99/month after - less than a paperback.
Paula Harrison's The Sea Pony is a magical animal adventure for 7 year olds about a girl who would give anything to talk to her favourite pony.
Grace lives in Cala Sands, a sunny fishing village by the sea. She sails out with her cousins every day (they still treat her like a baby, even though she can cast a net as well as them). But the best bit of her day is swimming with the sea ponies in the bay. There's one young pony with a rainbow tail who jumps higher than all the others.
Then two girls land on the beach, one riding a dragon and one on a sky unicorn. Sophy and Maya can talk to magical animals, thanks to two very special stones. Grace tries every stone in Sophy's little velvet bag. Not one of them works for her.
Who wouldn't be gutted? Grace hides it well, though, and throws herself into helping anyway.
Because the sea ponies are in trouble. Lady Cavendish, who owns the harbour, has been told to scoop them all up in an enormous net. Her crew plan to squash them into a wooden tank and sell them at market.
The best thing about Grace is how quick she is. She rows her cousins' boat into the harbour mouth to block Lady Cavendish's ship, then ties a knot in the sail rope REALLY slowly while her ladyship goes red in the face. Later the three girls creep on board at night with a pair of scissors. By morning they're stowaways, hiding behind crates and making off with the telescope (a bit sneaky, but for a good cause!).
It's a gentle kind of excitement. The baddie is more ridiculous than frightening, shrieking at her crew and nibbling crackers spread with green paste. The tension comes from whether the girls will get caught, and whether their plan will be enough.
This isn't the first Secret Rescuers adventure. Sophy and Maya talk about earlier rescues of a unicorn foal, firebirds and star wolves. Grace is new to all of it, though, so your reader finds out how everything works right alongside her.
If you've got a reader who loves animals and wishes they could chat to them, Grace's longing will feel very real. It's a nice one, too, for a child who knows how it feels to be the youngest and not taken seriously.
If they'd like to go back to where it all started, The Storm Dragon is the book where Sophy first finds her stone, along with a little dragon who badly needs hiding.
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