Jeanne Mellin
Pidgy’s Surprise
E P Dutton, New York, 1955, illus the author
Reprint due out in 2010
“Who would have thought it could happen! Cindy Sawyer who owned fat little Pidgy,
the Shetland pony, dreamed of
the beautiful horse she would have one day, a horse
like Pete Greene’s Thoroughbred. Shetland ponies were all very
well but….Cindy’s
dream became an obsession and her parents realized that she was becoming a very unhappy
girl.
After a summer full of fun and riding, with Pidgy actually winning a prize at
the Country Club Horse Show, a morning
came when Pidgy was missing from her stall!
Not until she looked into the emply stall did Cindy realize how much
she really loved
her pony. Cindy could neither eat nor sleep. Mother and Father were worried: had
they gone too far
by not including Cindy in the secret?”
They were all at breakfast when the telephone rang and Pete Greene’s voice hailed Cindy to hurry over to the Greene farm for a surprise. Could it be Pidgy?
Jeanne Mellin was childhood friends with Nancy Caffrey, and illustrated her Somebody’s Pony after the two girls made a childhood pact to write and illustrate a horse book. Both girls were members of Margaret Cabel Sellf’s New Canaan Mounted Troupe. Jeanne had her formal art training at the Rhode Island School of Design, and has been on many painting trips to England. Her style is in the tradition of the great English equestrian artists, Stubb, Herring and Munnings. She still works as an illustrator, and has illustrated Ellen Feld’s Morgan horse titles for Willowbend Publishing.
Many thanks to Susan Bourgeau for all her help with this section.
Finding the book: very difficult to find indeed, but it is being reprinted by Willowbend Publishing in 2010.
Links and sources:
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