Dear reader, I have officially reached the age where toys and music from my childhood are considered vintage. In fact, just yesterday, the radio station I was listening to in my car declared they were going to play a throwback song. I was thinking 80’s or 90’s, right? Dear reader, the song was from 2006! Yes, I realize that was almost 20 years ago, but seriously, to me 2006 doesn’t feel that long ago. Where does the time go?

Today I will be taking you on a nostalgic book trip, sounds exciting right? We’ll be going back to the late 90’s and early 2000’s to when I was a horse crazy child and teen. You see, during this time American Girl was in full swing, the My Little Pony toys were super popular, and there was no end to the animal-themed series a kid could read! I will be highlighting three of those in this blog post.

A Horse Called Wonder by Joanna Campbell

Ashleigh Griffen swore she’d never give her heart to another horse — not after a terrible disease wiped out her family’s breeding farm, along with Ashleigh’s favorite mare, Stardust.

Now the Griffens are starting over as breeding managers at Townsend Acres, and Ashleigh’s sure she is going to hate living there.

Then a small, sickly foal is born — a beautiful copper filly that looks like Stardust. No one thinks the foal will live or that it’s worth trying to save. No one but Ashleigh.

Can one girl’s love alone work miracles?

First of all, there is no link to the catalog for this particular book because it isn’t in the catalog at all. However, various other books in the series are in the catalog, so you’re in luck!

This series ran from 1991 to 2005, with the original series running from books 1-23 and then 23-72 completing the series with the focus shifting to a different girl and the subject matter of eventing, rather than racing. I remember just devouring these books, and since they came out in the 90’s there a good possibility I started reading them in elementary school. One of my core memories is reading that pivotal book number 23 and becoming so incensed at the drastic changes that I threw the book across the room! Dear reader, that may well have been my first rage over a book. I remember it distinctly to this day!

To hear my mom tell it, my horse crazy self was kickstarted when I got a kid’s meal at Hardee’s in, you guessed it, the 90’s, and I received a white plastic horse toy. I still have that toy in one of my dresser drawers. I also had a plush horse stuffed animal that I slept with at night. His name was Clip Clop, named for the little noisebox in his stomach that made sounds like horse hooves walking. I slept with him so much the stuffing had to be replaced in his stomach! I still have him as well.

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