About This Book:
*Review Contributed By Karen Yingling, Staff Reviewer*
Horses of the Wild West
The best part about this book for me was the fantastic illustrations by Kirbi Fagan, done in a style reminiscent of the Wesley Dennis illustrations in Marguerite Henry’s midcentury horse books like Misty of Chicoteague. These are not just a few pictures on the pages, but whole pages, sometimes black with white illustrations, that blend seamlessly with the story and provide an evocative background. The details of the trees, the variety of the small animals, and the feeling of motion in the drawings of the horses are all so well done, and add so much to the story.
This is written from Sky’s point of view, so there are a lot of references to human items and behaviors in odd terms, like “grabbers” for hands and “clickers” for guns. For some reason, the mules seem to have an accent. This makes the books perfect for readers who liked Erin Hunter’s Warriors books or series like Lasky’s Horses of the Sky.
Fans of Nir’s Once Upon a Horse series, Farley’s Phantom Stallion books, Skylar’s Shadow of a Doubt, and Elliot’s Bea and the New Deal Horse will love learning about the plight of wild horses in the US west, and take the environmental message to heart.
