Look what just arrived from England!
I ordered it through ABEBooks, a web site where secondhand booksellers post their stock. It’s out of print and not available in ebook, so on an impulse I went to ABEBooks, which had plenty of copies. This one was printed in 1964, but the first edition was published in 1941, during the war, and set during the war.
I read it as a child, because I was madly into pony books, like many other little girls, and was reading, among other things, the novels by the British Pullein-Thompson sisters. I even managed to find an Australian one, Good Luck To The Rider, by Joan Phipson, who went on to write many other children’s books.
But this one, though it has a horse in it, and the heroine adores it, isn’t a pony book. It’s set on a fictional French/British island, Clerinel. The Nazis arrive in a sneaky fashion rather than by plane, and the British residents have to evacuate - except thirteen year old Caroline and her brother Mick, who get left behind and have to hide. And Caroline is concerned for her horse, Dinah.
I remember the main bits, of course, from my childhood, but had forgotten that the children in the story are, as usual in many of the old English children’s books, middle class with servants and a nice home. Their father is a former journalist, which is interesting. But of course, you’d need money to be able to feed and look after a horse, let alone three(each child in the family has a pony).
I took the book with me to read at the pub last night, when I went there for dinner.
I’ll take it with me again on the tram to the city, where I am meeting a friend to see the dinosaur exhibition at the Melbourne Museum.
Three cheers for ABEBooks!
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