Joanna Cannan is a name that many people may not know now:  when pony books are discussed Jill will be brought up: depending on your age, The Saddle Club, and of course, the Pullein-Thompsons.  Joanna Cannan was not only the Pullein-Thompsons’ mother, but arguably one of the first, and best pony story authors.    Fidra Books are re-publishing Joanna Cannan’s popny books, and so far We met Our Cousins and London Pride are in print.  

Joanna Cannan’s Pony Books

Before Joanna Cannan wrote A Pony For Jean, pony books were generally a story told from the pony’s point of view.   There were earlier books which took off in a totally different direction, like Hildebrand and Plum Duff and Prunella, which explored a fantasy world of horses who could talk, and do quite a few other unexpected things as well.  Mary Oliver wrote of holidays with ponies, but Joanna Cannan’s stories started with Jean and were written from her point of view.  Jean coped with a country world new to her, cousins who scorned her, and an almost uncanny ability to lose things and generally get into a muddle.  

Joanna Cannan was always interested in the contrast between town and country (and was firmly on the side of the country).  In A Pony For Jean, Jean’s family hit financial difficulties and have to move from London to the countryside. We Met Our Cousins looks at the clash between town and country:  its heroes are town children, sent to Scotland, where they slowly learn to unbend.  In the sequel, London Pride, the two Scottish cousins, Morag and Angus visit London and all four children treat London much as they did the Scottish Highlands.  The later They Bought Her a Pony features an utterly urban child who finds the freedom of the countryside, and its attitudes, alien. There is hope for Angela Peabody (to stop her newly rich mother throwing away her horsey ornaments she buries them in a windowbox), but she expects money to solve all her problems.  The horse-mad family she meets, the Cochranes, have no money but endless resourcefulness, in which I suspect they were like the Pullein-Thompsons.  Eventually Angela realises that she is going to need more than money to get what she wants.

I Wrote A Pony Book was published in 1950, and was Joanna Cannan’s answer to the massive proliferation of pony books.   Her heroine is away at school, where she cannot ride; she is awkward and independent and does not fit in with the school ethos at all.  She doesn’t fit in particularly with the standard pony book plot either:  there is no loving description of her pony’s schooling.  Indeed, unlike her daughters, Joanna Cannan does not tend to concentrate on the schooling of pony and rider: Dinah, in Gaze at the Moon, says “I will not describe how we schooled Air Frost because it is all set out in books on how to school horses and really it was very simple.”  

Gaze at the Moon¸ Joanna Cannan’s last children’s novel, is different.  Probably my favourite Joanna Cannan, Armada published this as a paperback in the 1960s and my copy is still with me, though now in separate pieces.  Dinah, the heroine, and her family live in the country but have just been moved to a new council house in a nearby town.  Dinah’s stepmother and stepsister are distinctly urban in outlook:  Judy, the sister, wants to be a hairdresser, and none of the family understand Dinah’s ambition to be an artist.  Dinah loves her family despite their differences, and quietly, but with utter determination, she goes her own way.   Dinah’s stepmother says:  “Gaze at the moon and fall in the gutter.”  Dinah’s reply is  “I think you should gaze at it - if you do fall in the gutter you can get up again and at least you’ve gazed.”    -  an accurate summing up of Joanna Cannan’s attitude to life.