Janet Randall

Saddles for Breakfast

David McKay, New York, 1961, 186 pp, illus Paul Laune

There is also a Book Club edition, presumably printed around the same time. It has the same cover
art and illustrations as the original.

The blurb:

“Robin Marshall was delighted at the chance to have a respite from her large, befuddling family and take a summer
job at her cousin’s riding academy in California. What she found was a far cry from her expectations. For reasons
she could not fathom at first, the place had lost its former prestige. The fences needed mending, the horses needed
currying, and its clientele--now switched over to a rival, showier stable--needed to be won back. To make it worse,
Robin’s surly cousin, Butch, showed nothing but enmity toward her, and Cora, his mother, distrusted her ability to
handle the horses or do anything beyond household chores.

Because Robin had a genuine love of horses and riding and a willingness to work, her cousins soon acknowledged her for the real horsewoman she was. But they all knew hard work wasn’t enough to get the place on its feet again. This was where Robin’s penchant for making friends, her flair for publicity and knack for teaching young riders all came to the forefront. At summer’s end, just as an exultant Robin was headed back home toward her familiar school and a more appreciated family, came a new emergency. But by now Robin knew that one began to grow up by accepting responsibilities and she made the hard decision. There would be friends to help her -- Paula, her best friend, the handsome Guy Kennedy; and all the girls of the newly organized CurryComb Cub.”

Janet Randall wrote books both under her own name, and co-authored with her husband, credited as by “Bob and Jan Young”. Jan Randall was the daughter of a newspaper editor,and was born in the Mojave desert town of Lancaster, California. The family moved to suburban Los Angeles, but Janet was able to learn to ride during weekends and holidays spent on a ranch in the Big Tujunga Canyon of the Sierra Madres. She rode with a drill team performing at local parades and horse shows in San Diego.

She stuied at the University of California, and there met her husband, Robert W. Young. She married him in 1940, and while he published or edited weekly newspapers, she wrote occasional columns until having children put a stop to her newspaper career. Both husband and wife then worked as freelance writers, publishing work on “any subject they found saleable.” Their children did not share their parents’ interest in newspapers, their chief interest being mathematics. History does not relate whether the horse gene skipped them too. Many thanks to Susan Bourgeau for all her help with this page.

Finding the book: Saddles for Breakfast was not published in the UK, and is difficult to find here. It is however pretty easy to find in the USA.