Barbara May

Buckle Horse

Holt, New York, 1956, illus Paul Brown, 128 pp.

First Fling grows up expecting he will be a race horse, but after he is in
a trailer accident, he is retrained as a show horse, and has a tough

time.

Barbara May wrote one conventional horse book, Buckle Horse, and a true story told from the point of view of the horse.  As far as I am aware, she wrote no other books, She wrote articles and stories for the American, Canadian and British press, though I have not yet been able to trace any of these.  She also acted as correspondent for the Hunt.  She was born in England, and emigrated to Canada when young with her parents and sister.   Her particular love was the Pony Club, and she was the first District Commissioner of the Ottawa Valley Pony Club.  She worked with the Humane Society to improve the lot of horses used in logging camps.

The author, under the name Zita Barbara May wrote The Canadian Pony Club,  1982, as well as Canada’s International Equestrians, 1975.

Many thanks to Alison MacCallum for the information on the books and author.

Finding the book:  the book is not particularly easy to find, and will be very expensive if you do manage to track it down, as it was illustrated by Paul Brown. Buckle Horse was not published in the UK.

Sources and links:

Terri A. Wear:  Horse Stories, an Annotated Bibliography, Scarecrow Press, 1987

Dustjackets of the books

Bibliography - horse books only

Five Circles

Thomas Allen Ltd, 1958, illus Audrey McNaughton, 128 pp.

The true story of a a Canadian half-bred hunter who helped bring Canada a bronze Olympic medal.  Told

from the point of view of the horse.