Winnie, The Early Years – Horse Gentler in Training

Dandi Mackall's Horse Gentler in Training is a ranch story for 6 year olds about a girl who wants to be as good with horses as her mum is.

What happens

Winnie Willis is eight. Her family board and gentle horses on a Wyoming ranch, and her mum is so good at it that Winnie reckons you'd think she was a horse herself. Other people break horses, sometimes cruelly. The Willises don't.

More than anything on earth, Winnie wants to be a horse gentler too.

The trouble turns up in green trousers. Mr Green has boarded a champion Thoroughbred called Royal Princess at the ranch and would like her sorted out by yesterday. His son Austin tiptoes up behind her, nearly gets kicked, and calls her a stupid horse.

Winnie is certain she can catch Princess. She whistles the way her mum whistles. Princess lets her get one hand from the halter, then gives a whinny that sounds a lot like a laugh and canters off. Austin laughs too.

At school on Monday, Austin tells the whole class that the Willises took his father's money and can't do the job. And Winnie, who is furious, announces that she rides Princess.

She doesn't. Not yet.

The whole book is Winnie's voice, in short bursts, with a running thread of notes to herself. Note to self, there is only one horse gentler at this ranch and it isn't Winnie. It's a funny and very honest way in for a reader who knows what it feels like to say something bigger than you can back up and then have to live inside it.

There's proper horse knowledge in here too. Where a horse can and can't see. Why you groom before you ride. Winnie works out what breed everyone would be, so her teacher is a frisky Welsh pony and the school bus driver is a moody Shetland who might buck without warning.

Two things to know before you start. Winnie does get on that horse, and she does come off it, and there's a trip to hospital and an arm in a sling. And this is an openly Christian book. The family pray at the table and mid-conversation, Winnie's little sister answers most worries with nothing is impossible with God, and Winnie's guilt about her boast is partly guilt about lying to him. If that's your household it'll be a warm read. If it isn't, it's woven in rather than added on, so it isn't something you can skim past.

The chapters are very short and the whole story is told, which suits a reader who has just started managing a book on their own.

What to read next

If a horse's own opinion is the draw, Cinders tells her own story. She's a Percheron foal raised by two farm girls who plait flowers into her mane, until the day the farmer tells her that he has his space and she has hers.