I have to admit this is no longer a Top Ten, as I keep thinking of more books to put in, although I have made an effort to keep myself in check by restricting the list to one title by each author. It’s just as well I’m never likely to be on Desert Island Discs. Underlined authors have their own sections on the site.
Caroline Akrill : The Eventer’s Trilogy (I know that’s three books!)
I like most of her books - I think she’s the best of the recent pony book authors by far, but I love these the best. The Fane sisters are inspired creations. Caroline Akrill never takes them so far that you loathe them, but you can entirely see why they drive Elaine dotty.
Joanna Cannan : Gaze at the Moon
This was one of the very first pony books I bought (and you can see its sad remains on the Joanna Cannan part of the site). I liked this one because it has anything but a typical pony background, and I think she does the step family so well.
Ruby Ferguson: Jill and the Perfect Pony
The Perfect Pony has always been my favourite Jill. Amanda has such colossal face you can’t quite dislike her, and I loved the knots Jill tied herself into trying to be her.
Primrose Cumming: The Wednesday Pony
I did find it terribly hard to pick out one Primrose Cumming. Maybe if I’d read Silver Snaffles as a child that would have been in, but it’s never had quite the magical effect on me that it seems to have done on most! The Wednesday Pony is the one I love: he is such a good depiction of a pony. In many pony books the ponies never quite emerge as characters, but this one definitely does.
Eleanor Helme: White Winter
This has wonderful illustrations by Lionel Edwards, and although the ponies are a bit peripheral here that doesn’t matter. This is such a wonderful evocation of a long, hard winter on Exmoor.
Veronica Westlake: The Ten Pound Pony
I absolutely loved this as a child, and borrowed and re-borrowed the library’s copy. I completely forgot what it was called, and only found it again after pleading in an earlier catalogue for someone to tell me what the title actually was. The ending always made me cry and when I finally read it again recently it still did, rather to the surprise of the electrician who was putting in a fuse box for us!
H M Peel: Jago
Jago is the first pony book I ever read to put things from a real horse’s point of view.
K M Peyton: The Team
This I think is a wonderfully written book. The characters reach out from the page and grab you and it is one of those books you keep discovering new things in every time you read it. I particularly like the way K M Peyton portrays the tension between Ruth and Peter, and how their relationship changes over the course of the book.
William Corbin: Horse in the House
A lovely American book, wonderfully written and published over here in paperback by Puffin.
Diana Pullein-Thompson: I Wanted a Pony
The Pullein-Thompsons do very satisfying villains, and Augusta’s immensely smug cousins are some of the best. Augusta is a combination of resourcefulness and downright dopiness, and I felt she could have been me...
Josephine Pullein-Thompson: Pony Club Camp
I found it quite hard to pick out just one JPT. Six Ponies and Prince Among Ponies also jostled for attention. In the end I went for Pony Club Camp. The romance between Noel and Henry is very lightly done - certainly not enough to frighten the horses, or indeed me.
Glenda Spooner: Silk Purse
Silk Purse was something I first came across as a short story, and only discovered as a full length novel recently. It is the most brilliant depiction of a showing mother, or to be more accurate, a would-be showing mother. The hapless would-be show pony is wonderful too.
Helen Griffiths: Wild Heart
A new addition to my favourites: Wild Heart is absolutely not an easy read. Nature is red in tooth and claw, and humanity doesn’t show itself too well either, but it is an excellent read. La Bruja is a wild mare, hunted for her speed, and Helen Griffiths is wonderful at writing a sympathetic, but not at all romanticised, picture of life as it was for the wild herd.