Still Crazy for Horses

by Karen Briggs, Shawn Hamilton

Photos of 16 beautiful horses with fascinating facts on each breed. info on wild horses and websites for more info.

Genres: Animals, Nonfiction, Picture Books

37 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

Reviews

[Pasta Bird · Rating 4 out of 5]

The photos are very pretty! They seemed to have sought after good looking examples of each breed. I will say, there is some slight misinformation, but not enough to make me not like the book. Rocky Mountain Horses can in fact trot, their single foot gait is NOT a replacement of trotting, it is simply an extra gait. Haflingers aren’t palomino either. They are always flaxen chestnut, and are just usually a light shade of it that appears palomino. That’s why palomino is a color breed. Oftentimes “palomino” horses are simply flaxen chestnuts, and true palomino is much more rare, a reason to preserve it in its true form. It also says Belgians are all the same color. Yes, 99% of the time Belgians are flaxen chestnut. However, the shades range dramatically. They can be a really light, mealy shade of chestnut, and they can also be a dark, rich shade of it. So while they are in fact nearly only flaxen chestnut, they don’t come in one shade of that color, they come in every shade on the spectrum of flaxen chestnut. I didn’t really like the information on Big Lick either. They acted as though big lick was a thing that could be achieved in an ethical way. It is not. Big lick is the only common riding discipline that is 100% abuse. I also wish that Fjords got a color page for their information. I appreciate the “poster” (sadly can’t really take it out of the book) but I feel like they kind of got shoved aside.
I did really enjoy this book though. The false information I noted here is a minority of the information in this book. A lot of it is true and correct, and it comes with stunning photographs!

[Rena Sherwood · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a pleasant surprise! Usually, short Scholastic paperback non-fiction horse books for kids are a jumbled, and often tedious, hodgepodge of random information. The photos are pedestrian and forgettable.

However, this little book was written with passion, yet stuck to the facts. It even included information I wasn't aware of -- and I've been reading horse books for 50 years. It does suffer from being too short. It's generously illustrated by original black and white and color photos by Shawn Hamilton.

It begins with fast facts about foals, then looks at 15 horse and pony breeds. And they're not the usual suspects. Most of the breeds are unusual and, in the case of the Newfoundland Pony, incredibly rare. Although this book was written for an American audience, I think any horse crazy kid that can read English would like this. The book ends with a short look at horses used to teach kids to ride, and feral horses and ponies in North America.

Unusual names are given a pronunciation guide, which I appreciate. If I had a dollar for each time I hear someone mangle the name Chincoteague, I could buy the whole island.

Breeds often found in horse non-fiction books include:

* The Tennessee Walking Horse
* The Hackney (both horse and pony)
* The Mustang
* The Clydesdale
* Percheron and Belgian sharing the same chapter.

Unusual breeds mentioned include:

* The Exmoor Pony
* The Newfoundland Pony
* The Baskhir Curly
* The Rocky Mountain Horse
* The Norwegian Fjord
* The Australian Stock Horse
* The Akhal Teke.