Gerald Raftery

Jane Badger Books

Gerald Raftery

Gerald Raftery was an author, poet and journalist. He contributed to Harper’s Magazine, and is probably best known now for being the author of the poem Apartment House, which seems to be a stalwart on many poetry syllabuses. It’s very short, so I’ll quote it here:

A filing-cabinet of human lives
Where people swarm like bees in tunnelled hives,
Each to his own cell in the towered comb,
Identical and cramped--we call it home.

Gerald Raftery wrote two horse books that I have been able to find: Snow Cloud Stallion, and Twenty Dollar Horse. This last is unusual in that it tackles colour prejudice at a time when many American states still practised some degree of segregation. Snow Cloud Stallion is a more conventional story about the taming of a horse, although the theme of prejudice is common to both books: Snow Cloud is believed to be dangerous, and has to prove his worth.

Finding the books: Snow Cloud Stallion is very easy to find, both here and in the USA. Twenty Dollar Horse was not published in the UK, but is relatively easy to find in the USA, though generally as an ex-library copy.

Snow Cloud Stallion
Bodley Head, London, 1953, illus Imré Hofbauer
Puffin (Penguin) 1960 - many pb reprints, cover design Barry Driscoll

Longmans, 1967, illus Victor Ambrus

“Ken, a young boy working on his uncle’s farm in Vermont, first caught sight of Snow Cloud one evening at sundown
- a grey stallion, throwing up his head in the mist, galloping away into the shadows. It was no ghost, but a horse
which had been badly treated and now ran wild on the mountain. Slowly and patiently, Ken began to tame him,
first persuading him to take sugar from his hand, learning to ride him, teaching him to come right into the farmyard
without being afraid, gradually coaxing him back from his unbroken wildness. Once known as a dangerous
animal, Snow Cloud becomes a hero w hen he helps to bring home a sick man, found lying unconscious in the
snow.”

Other children’s books

Grey Lance
Bodley Head, London, 1952

City Dog
Bodley Head, London, 1954

Bibliography - pony books only

Twenty Dollar Horse

Julian Messner, New York, 1955
E M Hale & Company, 1967

Jack and Teddy buy a carnival horse, but they can’t let Jack’s father know, so they hide the horse in the woods.
Then the horse, Apache, gets away, and after he runs riot in the garden, Jack’s parents know all about the horse.
Despite the fact Teddy and Jack can do marvellous things with the horse, the town they live in can’t ignore the fact
that Jack and Teddy are different colours.