Teen books don’t really have a lot of numbers in the ‘animal story’ department unless you count werewolves. So I would just like to add, for those of you who still might enjoy a good dog story or horse story or chimp story, there are some titles out there. Reading these books might make you just sit back and relax into the story and then you let it go. Recently I read Sam Angus’ ‘A Horse Named Hero’ set in wartime England. While not a perfect book I was led to other lives as they experienced the war (children and adults) and the importance and nature of horses and ponies as ‘friends’ and work animals. Young ‘Dodo’ (Dorothy) and ‘Wolfie’ (Wolfgang) are sent to the English countryside as London experiences the Blitz of Nazi Germany. Their father, a WWI hero, is missing in Dunkirk and their mother is dead, so the housekeeper seeks safety for the children in the countryside where so many of the urban children were ‘quartered’ during the Blitz. Wolfie is enamored of horses, especially the little tin horse named Captain after the horse his father rode in the first World War. Tin Captain is one of his anchors as he and his older sister are flung into a stranger’s home until father is found and the Blitz is over. Perhaps all this would have worked for them had their father not been found and charged with treason – disobeying the direct orders so he could save his men. He is the only witness to a horrific crime and must prove his innocence. Townspeople turn against them and they are taken in by their young teacher and her father, the church rector. The horse part starts when Wolfie comes upon a foal whose mother has died. He is determined to save the foal and therein, we meet ‘Hero’. One gets a sense of English life in coal country where pit ponies live underground to serve the coal company and work til death and daily life is filled with nuances of making do and living with the personal opinion of who you are in the ranking of the community. Hero does grow and survive. The story carries throughout the news of Dodo’s and Wolfie’s father and his fight to save his honor. When Hero is stolen, though, Wolfie becomes a different boy. He will keep looking for Hero until he finds him. The book is historical fiction as well as a story of the relationship between man – or boy – and beast and the debt we often owe but do not repay to our animals. It’s not complicated and not a high school read, but as I said, sometimes those ‘Marly’s’, ‘Racing in the Rain’, ‘War Horse’, ‘Endangered’, ‘Black Beauty’ books are just what a rainy afternoon demand.
Sam Angus also wrote ‘Soldier Dog’. Click on Sam Angus for her website.
