What's the Name of That Book??? discussion
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Taking Flight
SOLVED: Children's/YA
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SOLVED. YA novel about a boy with rough upbringing whose life begins to change when he starts to work with horses. It also involves a rich, snobby girl his age who is jealous. [s]
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Cover: The edition I read had a blue cover with a small picture of a horse and a boy at the bottom.
Plot: (spoiler) It follows the story of a teenage boy from the UK who has a difficult home and school life. He gets into lots of trouble: joy riding, theft etc I think he may be part of a gang. Due to this, people make lots of judgements about his character, but he is more sensitive than people assume.
It also follows the story of a girl his age (I think they attend the same school) who is the opposite of him: she is rich and snobby.
Somehow, and I don't remember how, the male protagonist gets involved with horses, working at the same yard where the rich girl keeps her own horse. Here, he discovers he has a natural horse-whisperer like tendency with them. In one chapter, a horse spooks and gallops off, but when he stands in front of it, his presence seems to calm the horse to a stop.
He hides his involvement with the horses from his mates because he's embarrassed. The girl knows of course, but looks down her nose at him, mainly because she is jealous of his talent.
Over the course of the story, we see how the horses begin to change the boy's life.
Somewhere near the end of the book, something bad happens to him and he falls back into old tendencies. He steals a horse from the stables, rides it down a road but then gets hit by the car. I think the horse dies or needs to be put down. He is 'banished' from the yard. Right at the end, he kind of chooses the right path by returning the horse yard and the yard manager allows him to come back.
It's a really nice story, but wherever I look and no matter how I describe the book, I can not find it.