Galloping Through a ‘Horse Crazy’ Middle Grade Novel

THE FLYING HORSE (As soon as Upon a Horse, Guide 1), by Sarah Maslin Nir. Illustrated by Laylie Frazier.

Many ladies develop up studying a e book (for me it was “Silver Birch,” by Dorothy Lyons) through which the heroine longs for a horse, finds one, tames it and makes a connection that’s way more strong and enjoyable than these she has together with her schoolmates. Such a e book is usually the beginning of a lifelong infatuation with horses.

Sarah Maslin Nir’s “The Flying Horse,” the primary in a sequence of center grade novels based mostly on “actual horses and the individuals who love them,” was impressed by an expertise Nir, a reporter at The New York Instances, shared in her 2020 memoir “Horse Loopy.” In 2016, the Dutch warmblood Trendsetter, whom she had bought per week after her father’s dying two years earlier, stumbled and pitched ahead whereas she was driving him in a contest. Then he saved her life. “There was no approach he was falling wherever however on high of you. After which, midair, he flipped himself,” a spectator advised her. “I’ve by no means seen something prefer it. He torqued his entire physique as he got here crashing down and flung himself in the other way.”

This validated what Nir had felt concerning the horse from the second she laid eyes on him: “Trendsetter elevated a ardour in me for the game to an echelon I had solely ever aspired to achieve.”

“The Flying Horse” begins with Trendsetter’s delivery within the Netherlands, because the novel’s narrator imagines what it’s like to return into the world as a foal: “He lay flopped like a half-pitched tent, bum within the air, and the scrap of a tail protruding from his rear, flip-flipping.” From right here we get to know the foal’s persona and observe him as he grows up. (He’ll practice alongside the well-known Lipizzaners, or flying horses, at an equestrian citadel in Austria earlier than finally touring to America.)

It’s evident that one in every of Nir’s functions in “The Flying Horse” is to teach younger women about how horses see the world, the way it feels to be a horse, how horses relate to individuals. Her fashion is conversational and infrequently amusing: “Proper now, Stylish was getting a vibe. It was icky.”

Interspersed with the eight chapters from Stylish’s viewpoint are 5 from Sarah’s. Sarah lives in New York Metropolis and within the novel is 10 years previous when Trendsetter is born on the opposite aspect of the Atlantic Ocean. “Sooner or later, Stylish’s life would grow to be linked to Sarah’s … however neither of them knew that but.” Sarah is already obsessive about horses, and takes as many driving classes as she will be able to, however whereas Stylish is struggling to face for the primary time Sarah is “muddling via one thing totally different” and “no much less difficult”: making an attempt to spell. (Nir has spoken about her personal battle with a studying incapacity.) For me, Sarah’s chapters are essentially the most partaking, as a result of, little by little, she reveals how she overcomes her issues.

Given the inherent hazard of horseback driving (which Nir is aware of firsthand, having written in “Horse Loopy” concerning the generally scary accidents she has suffered), what I miss in “The Flying Horse” is the how-to. What has Sarah realized from her academics about easy methods to journey, easy methods to sense a horse’s temper and fears? When Sarah lastly mounts Trendsetter at 13, what does she discover about him that makes him totally different from different horses? Possibly the “legendary equestrian” Beverly Moore, Trendsetter’s savior in a second of disaster and Sarah’s idol, ought to have performed a bigger, extra significant function.

Jane Smiley is the creator of many horse novels (most just lately “Perestroika in Paris”), together with eight titles for younger readers.

THE FLYING HORSE (As soon as Upon a Horse, Guide 1) | By Sarah Maslin Nir | Illustrated by Laylie Frazier | 192 pp. | Cameron Children | $16.99 | Ages 8 to 12