Patricia Leitch (1933–2015)

Horse from the Black Loch is a page-turning adventure, with a wonderful Scottish setting. It's a book to delight any young aficionado of pony stories, folktales, and magic. But the portrayal of the Horse is too ambiguous and even contradictory to sit well with someone who reads it for the first time as an adult. Its origin and nature are never explained. Sometimes it seems clearly supernatural (apparently immortal, for one thing) and yet when the villains capture it and lock it in the shed it seems as helpless as any mortal horse. I closed the book with a feeling of bewilderment rather than satisfaction, but a pony-loving little girl who dreams of being special to a magical horse might find this a favourite book.… (meer)

*spoiler warning*

Well, I had a lot of small quibbles with this novel as I was reading it, but overall I really enjoyed it.

In the beginning it seemed like yet another "city girl who knows nothing about horses wants to get her own horse" book. She can't ride very well, and yet she rides a flighty hunter and ends up in lots of trouble. She doesn't seem to know much about horses or ponies, how to choose the right one, what to look for, etc, and for awhile it's cringe-worthy.

My opinion started to change when Sandy met Tarka and knew right away that she had to buy her, had to save the sick neglected pony even though this was far from her "dream pony". The drama with Tarka getting so sick was a bit cliched, it seems like almost every "first horse"-type book has that.

Some of the things that happened in the book... Maybe because it was written so long ago? Maybe things were just all-around safer back then, I really don't know. But I was very surprised at Sandy's instructor taking them riding in a storm, especially with shy-happy ponies. And amazed that Sandy, an 11 year old kid, was allowed to ride her pony 20 miles through a busy city she had never even been to. That seems almost neglectful on the parent's part. And then Karen and Sandy stopped in the middle of nowhere in a strange place to help a strange old man who said he was hurt. Nowadays that would be red-flag for "get out of there now".

Many things in this book simply go too fast. I know it's supposed to be a short children's book, but so many things that could have been really interesting drama (the hurt man, the struggle riding the ponies across the busy street, even the fox-hunting) were over in a page or two and didn't seem to add much to the story because they were over so quickly.

However! Overall it was a fairly good read, I liked the writing and the different (old-type) language, and I may even read it again someday.… (meer)