Richie's Picks: ANOTHER KIND OF COWBOY by Susan Juby, Harper Teen, 2007, 344p. ISBN: 978-06-076517-0
"I tried to trot Tandava around the outside of the ring while I waited for the bell to ring to signal that we could enter, but she insisted on cantering. It was like riding a guided missile without the guidance part.
"Dressage is all about harmony between horse and rider -- calmness, suppleness, submission, plus not getting killed. All I had to do was pretend like I had things under control."
ANOTHER KIND OF COWBOY is the powerful and frequently side-splitting tale of Alex and Cleo, two teens saddled with emotionally absent parents. Alex, a native of Vancouver Island, is a horse-obsessed young man whose early childhood focused on his pretend steed Magnifico:
"There was Del Magnifico le Noir. If you didn't know better, you might have mistaken him for a dark-blue Norco bike, but to six-year-old Alex Ford, Magnifico was a three-year-old Thoroughbred, reminiscent of the Black Stallion. Like the Black Stallion, Magnifico was given to bursts of thrilling speed, which is why Alex kept a red dog leash tied to his handlebars."
Alex transitions to a real ride at eleven when his father, the proprietor of an RV sales lot, wins an old horse -- Colonial Turnipseed -- for Alex in a poker tournament: "He was a good match for his [new] owner, who'd changed from an imaginative child into a serious, hardworking, perpetually stressed young man who was only able to relax when he rode."
Meanwhile, Cleo is a native of L. A. where her father is a movie producer and director. Her childhood had included a stable full of plastic horses; the notion of riding a real, live equine had been her mother's brainstorm:
"One day my mother met someone at her tennis club, a lady who sent her daughters for riding lessons at a stable out in Lakeview Terrace. The lady, who just happened to be the wife of a studio head, told my mother that the lessons were 'wildly expensive.' That was all my mom needed to hear. A day later I was booked at the same barn for twice-a-week lessons."
Now, at sixteen, in reaction to some indiscretions which arguably result from her being essentially parentless, Cleo has been shipped off to a fancy girls' boarding school in Vancouver. Her parents have armed her with a high limit credit card and a beautiful and explosive new horse:
"On the sales video my mom got, Tandy was described as an 'extravagant mover with international potential.' She's also what people sometimes refer to as a lot of horse, which is the polite way to say better handled by a professional and definitely too much horse for a sixteen-year-old who's only been riding for four years."
The pair of teens come to know each other when they both begin dressage lessons at Limestone, owned by an older couple, Fergus and Ivan, who have retired to Vancouver Island and purchased the beautiful facility to house their own retired Grand Prix-level horses.
As the pair of teens come to learn the art of dressage from their brilliant, demanding (and caring) coaches, Alex has to come to terms with his sexuality and the entitled-but-lonely Cleo tries to find somebody -- anybody -- to really care about her.
"I looked around for someplace to hide the Samosa, I considered dropping it down the gaping hole at the front of my shirt, but I knew it would leave a big telltale grease trail."
Some of my favorite scenes are those that bring Cleo in contact with Alex's young Aunt Grace and his sisters Maggie and May. They are full of absolutely outstanding slapstick while simultaneously serving to underscore where the single-child Cleo has come from and what she has missed as a child.
The horse-loving Susan Juby has written a book about her favorite four-footed-friends that totally delighted this 'ol cowboy...err, goat guy.
Richie Partington, MLIS
Richie's Picks http://richiespicks.com
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Caldecott '09
Richie's Picks http://richiespicks.com
Moderator, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/middle_school_lit/
BudNotBuddy@...
http://www.myspace.com/richiespicks
Caldecott '09
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