Karen's Pony Camp

Baby-Sitters Little Sister #87

by Ann M. Martin, Susan Tang (Illustrator)

Anticipating nothing but fun a pony camp, the Three Musketeers are disappointed when Karen is teased by older campers, Nancy struggles with her fears, and Hannie wants to do nothing but ride. Original.

Genres: Childrens, Collections, Summer

109 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1997

About the author

Ann Matthews Martin was born on August 12, 1955. She grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, with her parents and her younger sister, Jane. After graduating from Smith College, Ann became a teacher and then an editor of children's books. She's now a full-time writer.

Ann gets the ideas for her books from many different places. Some are based on personal experiences, while others are based on childhood memories and feelings. Many are written about contemporary problems or events. All of Ann's characters, even the members of the Baby-sitters Club, are made up. But many of her characters are based on real people. Sometimes Ann names her characters after people she knows, and other times she simply chooses names that she likes.

Ann has always enjoyed writing. Even before she was old enough to write, she would dictate stories to her mother to write down for her. Some of her favorite authors at that time were Lewis Carroll, P. L. Travers, Hugh Lofting, Astrid Lindgren, and Roald Dahl. They inspired her to become a writer herself.

Since ending the BSC series in 2000, Ann’s writing has concentrated on single novels, many of which are set in the 1960s.

After living in New York City for many years, Ann moved to the Hudson Valley in upstate New York where she now lives with her dog, Sadie, and her cats, Gussie, Willy and Woody. Her hobbies are reading, sewing, and needlework. Her favorite thing to do is to make clothes for children.

http://us.macmillan.com/author/annmma...

Reviews

[Em's Adventures · Rating 4 out of 5]

I got really confused at first because I thought Blueberry was supposed to be too old to ride, but then Karen remembered (not sure how she forgot that!). I'm also not sure why she didn't just choose another pony to start learning on when she was asked twice in the beginning whether she was sure she didn't want to switch. She ended up having a miserable time because of her stubbornness but to her credit it did pay off and she managed to learn how to control her pony.

[Jaclyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was fun. Happy that each of the musketeers found their place at camp -- Hannie a natural at riding, Nancy scared of riding but great at caring for a new horse mom and her foal, and Karen good at pretty-ing up ponies.

[Looney · Rating 1 out of 5]

0.5/5

[Sarah Lu · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have no clue why, but I love this book. All of the horses and ponies probably have something to do with it. Also, I don't think that there was all that much of a moral that was being beaten into the reader's head like most of the time. Yes, it teaches you that you need to work hard, but it wasn't preachy.