Rating: 2/5
** spoiler alert ** This book was very well-written but I didn’t think it had a particularly great plot and it certainly had a bad ending (two ponies die and that’s that!).
It’s the story of a boy called Jody, the son of a farmer, Carl Tiflin. It’s the story of how he “got a pony, and how it died” (quoted from the blurb). When Mr Tiflin decided to give his pregnant mare’s colt to Jody when it was born. Mr Tiflin’s friend and employee, Billy Buck, delivered the colt, but finding that it was breech, hammered the mare’s head in in order to get the colt out without more painfully killing the horse (if it’s possible to have a more painful death than having your head smashed in). Billy then plonked the wet, bloody yet unharmed colt at Jody’s feet with a few grumpy words and on that note, the book ended on the same paragraph.