Jessie Haas

Horse books mean family for me. My earliest memory of a children's horse book is my father's nightly reading of Little Black, A Pony, or Little Black Goes to the Circus. They are early chapter books, among the easiest horse books for beginning readers at that time. (Now there are others, including the Cowgirl  Read More 

Yesterday I dipped into The Chestry Oak, by Kate Seredy. This is a book I read as a teen and loved, and had not looked at in many years. I was looking for gorgeous prose about horses, to snip out some quotations for Workman's Horse Gallery 2017 calender, and I found some.
But I also found myself unable to keep from crying, at the story of Hungarian Prince Michael, who lives with his father in Chestry castle in the midst of the Nazis. Michael loves Chestry Valley, his father, their beautiful horses, and his peasant nurse, and loses them all in one terrifying night of bombing.
But the part that made me cry was when he begins to get things back again, in his new home. I won't spoil the plot, just suggest that you buy this book, recently re-released. Don't read it in public, or with anybody you can't cry in front of. It's a sentimental book, yes, but that really works here, and Seredy wrote so beautifully and knowingly about horses. You will fall in love with the black stallion, Midnight--but you can't have him for your own. He belongs to himself. Read More 

Riding season is about over for me. I've gone from obsessed, and starting every day with a ride, to having to push myself to squeeze one in. In part I'm transitioning by writing a story that features a horse almost identical to Robin--so I'm still obsessed, just not getting as much exercise!

A first for me--last week I went to a model horse show and signed my first model, with a Sharpie, on his belly. It was a fascinating scene that I would have loved as a kid. In my day, boys and girls, we clomped our models around on the floor and made up stories  Read More