Book Review

When Horses Could Fly and Other Fantastic Tales

By Sharon Janus

Illustrations by Kathy Newell-Worby

Published by Equibooks

Visit www.equibooks.com

Reviewed by Virginia Thompson

When Horses Could Fly and Other Fantastic Tales will likely still be read one hundred years from now. The book will take its place among such other children's classics as Black Beauty and Misty of Chincoteague. Twelve tales set in a land resembling what readers find in fairy-tales are narrated by a mare horse to her "young ones, a filly and a colt." The tales are told to teach her young charges about horse behavior, but the book takes a decided right turn at silly, making for truly pleasurable reading.

Case in point, "Why Horses Have Four Hooves" is intended to teach the "barn-bound young ones, a filly and a colt" that feet aren't to be used to make the other black and blue. The "barn-bound young ones had been poking and prodding and pounding each other" for hours. In an effort to distract her children, the mother tells the story of why horses have four feet and how they got them. This is only one chapter that will pleasantly surprise readers. The author has done her homework, for literary allusions are frequent, such as Sleipnir, a little-known eight-legged horse from the pages of mythology.

The author has studied literature and philosophy, and it's evident in the work. Her style is enchanting. It's sort of Dr. Seuss and Lewis Carroll blended into one. There's the humor of Carroll in addition to the music of Seuss. Readers need not know any of this to be entertained by the charm and numerous jokes of the book, however.

All that is needed is the desire to be entertained by such joyful reading.