This is a book I have history with. It's intimately tied to my love of books and libraries.When I was young I went to a religious private school in the next town over. As a result of this, and of being painfully shy, living in poverty, and being a little weird, I didn't really have friends in my neighborhood. What I did have was a love of reading. My sister, who is almost 12 years older than me, taught me to read when I was 3. I was always in some hidey hole reading a book or very occasionally a comic. When I was in the 1st grade my class went to the public library on a field trip. The students were allowed to get a card and check out books. The problem was, that I lived in the next town over and so could not get a card without paying a fee. My family was extremely poor, so I knew I couldn't pay the fee. My teacher, seeing how upset I was, paid the fee herself and I was able to check out 2 books that day. The first 2 books I checked out were The Many Loves Of Dobie Gillis by Max Shulman, and The Black Stallion by Walter Farley. I think I eventually read close to every book in the juvenile section of the library (it was a small town and a small library, so this is not as impossible a feat as it might seem to people who grew up in larger cities). Now at this point I had been reading for a few years, but these 2 books were the first I picked out all on my own and they were very special to me. I'll probably get into Dobie Gillis, the book and the show, later. But today I want to talk about The Black Stallion. I recently acquired almost the full run of the series and immediately reread this first book for the first time in 40 years.
I will admit, reading this book added to kids thinking I was weird. I was a boy, and even though the book was written as an adventure story from a boy's point of view by the early 80's horses were considered by many to be "girly". But this is a story about a shipwreck, about an unlikely friendship, and most excitingly about horse racing.The book may seem a little dated now, since there is no internet, no smartphones, no cable t.v. in the story. At the time that I read it initially it's lack of specific details in some regards led to it feeling more timeless. The story follows Alec Ramsay, a boy on his way back home after doing missionary work with his uncle, and a wild black horse that ends up on his ship. Alec feels bad for the horse and visits him and sneaks him little treats. There is a terrible storm, and as the ship is going down Alec is the only one who thinks about the safety of the horse. After releasing the horse to give it a chance to live, he realizes that it might also be his chance to survive. Horse and boy end up on an island, and Alec helps the horse survive there as well. He and the horse slowly bond over the course of time. They are of course eventually rescued.
Alec is allowed to keep the horse once they get back to civilization, and he happens to have a neighbor who has a barn and a field where the horse can be kept. The neighbor turns out to have been a prize winning jockey, and recognizes the stallion as having championship potential. Unfortunately with no pedigree, the horse cannot be entered in any official races. As luck would have it, there is an unofficial race taking place between 2 champions that are not able to race in official competition due to being in different geographic leagues, or something of that nature. It's a bit contrived, but it's the setup for the stallion to get his chance to run against the best our country has to offer. And that contrivance and a few others might make it seem like everything just falls into place too easily for Alec and his stallion at times. I felt that way a little. Of course, this book was obviously written to be a fantasy fulfillment, so that lends itself to this. But there's also the fact that the bond between boy and animal was forged in hardship on a desert island. And while the horse if just naturally very fast, he and the boy train rigorously leading up to the race. The ex-jockey, Henry, who becomes Alec's partner in this is very adept at getting the media on his side and helping to tilt the scales in his favor.
At the end of the day I'd say this book represents something we've lost. It's a book written for a younger audience, but it's not childish. It's an adventure story and a story of friendship. We don't tell a lot of stories like this these days. There's nothing really at stake other than a boy's goals and aspirations, and that is enough. It's the kind of storytelling I think we could use more of these days honestly. Stories now seem to be at either extreme of being completely childish or raunchy and edgy. Almost everything that does exist in the in-between space is superhero fare with the Earth, galaxy and/or universe at stake. Don't get me wrong, I love superhero stuff, but I think we should leave room for these smaller stories as well. The bravery of a boy learning to ride a wild stallion alone on a desert island can be just as thrilling as a mythological being with the strength to topple buildings bludgeoning an army of aliens and/or androids, sometimes more so. And I think kids (and adults) could stand to be reminded that they don't need wizards and vampires to fire their imagination, sometimes all they need is a horse and his boy. (Yes, that phrasing was purposeful, guaranteed I'll be talking about Narnia at some point.)
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