Stormy, Misty’s Foal – Marguerite Henry

On August 1, 2020July 12, 2020 By nymithIn Adventure, American writers, Animal Stories, Horse Stories, Read Alouds, Set in Virginia, Survival StoriesLeave a comment

This second sequel is a great improvement on Sea Star and makes so little reference to the events of that book that it could even be read as the first sequel to Misty – which nine year old me believed it to be, thanks to the Aladdin boxset.

stormy Title: Stormy, Misty’s Foal (Misty #3)
Author: Marguerite Henry
Illustrator: Wesley Dennis
Original Publication Date: 1963
Edition: Aladdin Paperbacks (1991), 223 pages
Genre: Animal Stories. Survival stories.
Ages: 8-12
First Line: In the gigantic Atlantic Ocean, just off the coast of Virginia, a sliver of land lies exposed to the smile of the sun and the fury of wind and tide.

Misty has been home with the Beebes for an indeterminate amount of time and is now ready to have her first foal. Paul and Maureen are excited and impatient, but a violent storm strikes the islands, causing massive tidal flooding and forcing the locals to evacuate. Animals can’t come on the helicopters, so the Beebes have to move Misty into their kitchen and hope for the best. Will Misty and her colt survive? Will the Beebes have a home to return to? And how can the islands ever recover from such terrible devastation?

Stormy, Misty’s Foal is a much darker novel than Misty or Sea Star, death-riddled from the sixth chapter (when a neighbor reports on two thousand drowned baby chicks), onward through the storm and into its aftermath, in which Paul and Grandpa Beebe are enlisted to scour the islands and place markers wherever dead ponies are found. It’s a sequel meant for older kids, with a greater suspense and dread, and it stands on its own identity rather than the laurels of what came before.

cat and dog, wesley dennis — Happy dog, less happy cat.

Being considerably longer than the first two Beebe books, Marguerite Henry is able to place more focus on the location, with Pony Ranch clearly defined as a going concern. There are more details surrounding such things as church visits and the contents of the Beebe’s smokehouse, along with a family cat and dog. Misty is referred to as a “movie star,” and she’s obviously made the family prosperous, but there’s no indication in the text that she was ever gone, which makes it feel like Sea Star never happened.

Again, Henry contradicts a passage in her earlier work, preventing the three books from coming together as an integral whole. From Sea Star: “Look at me, Sea Star,” [Paul] said. “When Misty comes back home, you and she can be a team. Misty and Star. Sound pretty to you? And you can run like birds together and you can raise up foals of your own, and Maureen and I can race you both and we won’t care which wins.” It’s a pretty passage and was a high point of that book, yet Sea Star doesn’t appear or get mentioned here. The reason is probably that the true story had an unhappy ending – orphan foals are hard to keep alive, and the Beebe’s efforts were in vain – but after writing such a positive tale, Henry disappoints any children hoping to see Misty and Star together by silently sticking to the facts.

Grandpa Beebe, wesley dennis — Grandpa Beebe worries over his life’s work.

There are a host of positives that come with this third story, though. Chiefly among them is a real sense of the Beebe family as an ensemble cast. Therefore, Paul is no longer the only really proactive character; everyone has a job to do when the disaster strikes, and they each have their own fears to quell. Grandpa Beebe is particularly changed by this process into a man in his own right rather than the wise authority figure of previous books.

Misty spends much of her time separated from the Beebes, as their symbol of home, history and everything they wish to return to (with Stormy embodying hope for the future). Given this is based off of the Ash Wednesday storm of 1962, it’s clear that Henry is again playing loose with the facts – the real Clarence and Paul Beebe had both sadly died in the intervening decade and a different branch of the family was living at Pony Ranch and caring for Misty during this time. However, the extensive credits at the end of the book make it clear that Henry was determined to do right by the islanders and what they endured. She consulted everyone from the family to the mayor to the coast guard, giving Stormy‘s evacuation and cleanup scenes clarity and definition.

A street sign veered by, narrowly missing the horses’ knees. 98th Street, it said. Grandpa turned around to make sure he had read it aright. “My soul and body!” he boomed. “It scun clear down from Ocean City! That’s thirty mile away!”
…
In front of Barrett’s Grocery two red gas pumps were being used as mooring posts for skiffs and smacks and trawlers. A Coast Guard DUKW, called a “duck,” and looking like a cross between a jeep and a boat, came churning up alongside Grandpa and Paul.
…
As they turned onto Main Street, which runs along the very shore of the bay, Paul was stunned. Yesterday the wide street with its white houses and stores and oyster-shucking sheds had been neat and prime, like a Grandma Moses picture. Today boats were on the loose, bashing into houses. A forty-footer had rammed right through one house, its bow sticking out the back door, its stern out the front.
Nothing was sacred to the sea. It swept into the cemetery, lifted up coffins, cast them into peoples’ front yards.

flood destruction, wesley dennis — Flood destruction.

Stormy works just as well as the earlier volumes for reading aloud, and in this case parents might actually find the plot more gripping than their children, who would most likely focus on the ponies and the missing dog while parents would immediately grasp the larger nature of the disaster.

Of course, it isn’t all grim – there’s a great deal of focus on the community supporting one another and on the brave men in the Coast Guard and local volunteers setting forth into the floodlands, by boat and helicopter, providing aid and rescue. Also, the various book covers don’t exactly keep you in suspense about whether Misty safely delivers her foal or not.

Spoilers for the final chapters below.

Misty and Stormy end up on tour, raising money to restore the depleted herds of Assateague. Because we’ve seen the devastation close up, this tour to help the ecology and economy of Chincoteague comes across as truly heartwarming (unlike the previous college-for-Clarence plot), and it does help a lot that the Beebes don’t sell her off this time.

End of Spoilers.

One bit of advice I’d give is that no matter how many of the Misty books you decide to add to your library, avoid the Aladdin editions pictured at the top of these reviews. The Aladdin books are clearly cheap reprints and Wesley Dennis’s marvelous illustrations lose a great deal of definition in the process.

See Also: Misty of Chincoteague and Sea Star.

Parental Guide!

surviving ponies, wesley dennis — Surviving ponies.

Violence: A great deal. Many animals die in the flood, either drowned or exposed to the elements. Much of the time this is only mentioned in passing, but when Paul and Grandpa finally make it out to their ponies’ winter pasture they find an entire herd dead, and proceed to make a grim search for survivors. The heart-breaking work went on. They came upon snakes floating, and rabbits and rats. And they found more stallions dead, with their mares and colts nearby. And they found lone stragglers caught and tethered fast by twining vines. Grandpa is hit especially hard by this loss.

However, none of the main animal characters die and there are no human casualties at all, so depending on what your own child has already read, this might be very easy to handle. I remember finding it extremely disturbing when I first read it, but a year or so later this became my favorite Misty book.

Values: Faith, hope and charity all get their due, along with love of home and family, some grassroots philanthropy and community pulling together in hard times. The civic emphasis of the previous volumes (obey your elders and sacrifice for college) is replaced by civil disobedience. The Mayor has trouble with the mainland government after the storm:

“The government has approved sending ‘copters to take fresh water to the ponies still alive on Assateague, but they have no orders yet to take out the dead ones.”
Grandpa exploded. “Mayor! The live ones has got water. There’s allus water in the high-up pools in the White Hills. Them ponies know it.”
“You and I know it too, Clarence. But sometimes outside people get sentimental in the wrong places.”

This theme continues when the government refuses to allow women and children to return to Chincoteague, with Grandpa deciding to just smuggle his family home.

Perception of government isn’t the only thing that changed between the 40s and 60s. The role of women had too, and Grandma, a positive and respected figure before, is now singled out for pity at various points for having to always be at home or supporting the Ladies’ Auxiliary. As for Maureen…

Role Models: Maureen is now actively complaining about being a girl. As Maureen and Grandma heaped the trays and carried them back, Maureen’s lip quivered. “Oh, Grandma, Paul didn’t even ask what I did today. He doesn’t even know I was at Doctor Finney’s, riding a famous trotter. Oh, Grandma, why was I born a girl?” This is right after Paul and Grandpa come back from scouting for dead ponies, both so stricken by the sight that they can’t even talk about it, and she’s whining because she was spared all that and got to play with living ponies instead. She spends much of this book bursting into tears. “Oh, Grandma, being a girl is horrible. Paul always gets to have the most excitement.”

She’s acting as if trawling the death-choked waters is fun and games, and that’s not to mention that Paul only gets to accompany his grandfather on these forays back to the islands because he’s getting near full-grown, and the Coast Guard needs able-bodied men to do these jobs. Maureen is a pre-teen girl. She comes off far worse here than she ever did back in the 40s, precisely because Henry is trying to make her more outspoken – chafing at restrictions while ignoring that those restrictions are perfectly logical in this situation. The author never has any of her characters sit down and talk to Maureen about her attitude, and the girl is now a terrible role model, even though the others all remain admirable.

Educational Properties: Storms and flooding are serious concerns in coastal communities, and Stormy covers many aspects of such crises, from the creation of tidal storms to which citizens are most vulnerable when the power goes out (there’s a subplot involving a man who lives in an “electric cradle”). The details of evacuation, clean up and recovery mean that a lot of research and discussion could take place around this book, whether or not such a scenario could happen where you live. Obviously, massive amounts of natural science could also be tied in with Stormy, and there are also some random bonuses – like the reference to Grandma Moses and a world news report on the radio which is a time capsule in and of itself.

End of Guide.

I highly recommend Stormy, Misty’s Foal. It could foster some great conversations, and it’s full of drama without feeling lopsided the way Sea Star did. At this point, it seemed that Marguerite Henry had said all she needed to about Misty’s life, but Misty had three foals in all and Henry kept tabs on the descendants of her former pet and muse, eventually resulting in one final book about an especially gifted descendant: Misty’s Twilight. Expect my review next month.

Up Next: An odd little book by William McCleery, brought back in print by the NYRB Children’s Collection.

Sea Star: Orphan of Chincoteague – Marguerite Henry

On July 4, 2020June 20, 2020 By nymithIn American writers, Animal Stories, Horse Stories, Read Alouds, Set in Virginia, Superfluous SequelsLeave a comment

Way to betray the entire premise of your original classic, Ms. Henry.

Title: Sea Star: Orphan of Chincoteague
Author: Marguerite Henry
Illustrator: Wesley Dennis
Original Publication Date: 1949
Edition: Aladdin Paperbacks (1991), 172 pages
Genre: Animal Stories.
Ages: 8-11
First Line: Paul was separating each silver hair in Misty’s tail.

I’ll begin with a quote from Misty of Chincoteague to explain my frustration with this book: Now when a buyer came to look at the colts, Maureen did not run to her room as she used to do, pressing her face in the feather bed to stifle her sobs. Nor did Paul swing up on one of Grandpa’s ponies and gallop down the hard point of land to keep from crying. Now they actually led the colts out to the buyers to show how gentle they were. They even helped load them onto waiting trucks. All the while they kept thinking that soon they would have a pony of their own, never to be sold. Not for any price.

Well, that didn’t age well.

It’s a bright July day when a silver airplane lands at Pony Ranch. Movie men have come to film the annual Pony Penning, and they want to purchase Misty for the film and subsequent tour. Paul and Maureen are guilt-tripped into selling Misty in order to put their uncle through college, and are afterwards thankful to discover an orphaned colt on Assateague. Little Sea Star helps to distract them from their loss but the colt is frail and refuses to eat – it’s up to the whole Beebe family to find some way to save the poor thing.

https://missmollys-inn.com/wp-content/uploads//2012/12/Marguerite-Henry-misty-of-chincoteague.jpeg — Marguerite and Misty.

Marguerite Henry had no plans to write a sequel to Misty of Chincoteague – having taken great liberties with the true story, she thought it stood well enough on its own, at least until she heard about little Sea Star. In this follow-up novel she tried to bring the plot more in line with reality. The real Misty had actually been sold to Marguerite Henry herself, and she did bring Misty to book signings to delight children. One important difference is that the real Misty was purchased before she’d even been weaned – while Clarence Beebe had not been planning to sell her, the little foal was not a beloved family pet, hard won from the wilds of Assateague and saved up for over a hard summer’s work by the Beebe children. Misty of Chincoteague was pure poetic license, delivered in gratitude to the Beebes for agreeing to sell such a wonderful pony. The characters by the end of the book were in a different place than they’d ever been in the real world, so the follow-up act of selling Misty was impossible to replicate naturally – instead, Marguerite Henry had to devote a portion of Sea Star‘s dialogue to a series of justifications for the decision. Unfortunately, none of them are very convincing.

Now it’s worth pointing out that the novel’s dialogues are only the connective tissue between the A and B plots. With the exception of the scene where Misty is crated for the plane trip, all of the horse material is entertaining for kids – the first half details the excitement of Pony Penning Day and the last third is all about saving Sea Star. Any child who loved Misty will easily pick this sequel out in a bookstore and they will probably like most of it – while it was my least favorite of the original trilogy as a kid, I still read it multiple times. Children might not agree with the decision to sell Misty, but it’s not likely to be a total deal-breaker and they certainly aren’t going to care about the mathematics of commerce or possible communistic overtones. That being said…

So the two men from New York arrive and, upon learning that the Beebe grandparents are both out, immediately start horse-trading with the kids. First they offer the tempting good news – a movie! how exciting! – and afterwards explain that they’d have to purchase Misty to make the film happen. They also want to take her to schools, libraries and movie theaters, and start guilting Paul and Maureen:

Mr. Van Meter said, “We had a feeling you might want to share Misty with boys and girls everywhere.”
“Boys and girls who have never seen a real pony,” Mr. Jacobs continued.
It was Mr. Van Meter’s turn now. “Sometimes when I hear children in New York talk about Misty, it seems she no longer belongs to a boy and girl on an island, but to boys and girls everywhere.”
The words kept flying, back and forth, higher and higher. “Misty has grown bigger than you know,” Mr. Jacobs said. “She isn’t just a pony. She’s a heroine in a book!”

Apart from the interesting metafictional element going on here (Misty of Chincoteague is a book within the sequel to the book) this is some appalling behaviour by two grown men, and Grandpa Beebe is rightly disgusted on his return. Also, no, Misty does not “belong” to all children everywhere, the book does. But the kids fall in line and even parrot some of this back at Grandma to shore up their decision to sell. “When they told how much Misty meant to poor little city children,” says Maureen. Well, as a former “poor little city child” who dreamt of riding lessons which my parents could never afford, I would not have wanted a girl in the countryside to give up her pony so that I could spend five minutes petting it. Not to mention the cold business decision to make thousands of children momentarily happy at the expense of making two extremely sad. As Grandpa says, “livin’ out here on this lonely marshland, why, Misty’s the nighest to a friend these childern got.” Are they undeserving of the pony they worked so hard for, just because she’s famous now?

Misty sold — Wesley Dennis does a great job with a sad scene.

The picture men’s arguments fail to entirely sway the family and Grandpa gladly sends them packing. However, shortly afterwards Grandma Beebe shows up with the woeful news that Clarence Lee, Paul and Maureen’s young uncle, can’t afford the college tuition of 300 dollars to study for the ministry. The children must now nobly sacrifice their beloved pony for the greater good of the family… No, hang on, that argument is also flawed.

First of all, it hinges on a character we never get to meet. Saintly Clarence Lee does not feature in a single scene in any of the three Misty books, so it is very difficult to care about his hopes and dreams. This is a failure in terms of dramatic impact, but it would still be an understandable decision for the characters in an era when college could have a great positive impact on an entire family’s prospects – until you do the math and realise that Grandpa Beebe is being taken for a fool.

The movie men explain that their company was young and struggling and could afford to pay only two hundred and fifty dollars for Misty. So she’s a famous pony and they’re trying to get her on the cheap. Grandpa agrees to this arrangement because, after a sale he was making fell through, he’s only got 50 dollars to his name. Combined, that makes up the entire tuition fee in one fell swoop. Problem is, the deal Grandpa had lost involved selling a “whole flock” of ponies – the buyer he had lined up decided to buy used trucks instead. So Grandpa has a “whole flock” of unsold ponies, and the going rate of wild ponies back in Misty of Chincoteague was 100 dollars. In that novel it was also made clear that gentled ponies could be sold for higher price. They’re sitting on a number of ponies that could easily turn a profit and instead they sell their famous Misty for beneath her value? How has Pony Ranch stayed in business?

Also, since when is college a one-time deal? Why can’t Clarence Lee wait a year and reapply? Grandma even says he’s recovering from pneumonia, which is why he can’t be expected to earn the money for himself. If he’s that physically frail, maybe it’s not the best time to embark on a grueling course of study? Selling out a beloved family pet to be hauled from place to place (which is bound to be stressful for a pony who has never traveled before), and giving her into the care of people who see a financial meal ticket decades before the film industry enforced an animal welfare code, all because college is worth any price? This has not aged well. Attempts to parallel them putting Misty in a sale crate with Paul releasing the Phantom back into the wilds also miss the mark because the Phantom was not happy at Pony Ranch while Misty clearly is.

And so Misty is sold. They don’t even write up a formal contract, just a vague promise that Misty will be sent home after the tour is over. Luckily, Henry was inspired to write a third book in the series in the 1960s, assuring new generations of children that Misty did indeed come back to Paul and Maureen – unless those children got the Aladdin Horseshoe Library box set, which went ahead and listed the books in the wrong order so that Sea Star appeared to be the conclusion to the series after all.

https://d20eq91zdmkqd.cloudfront.net/assets/images/book/large/9780/6897/9780689716249.jpg — No, I’m not bitter.

Sea Star rescued, wesley dennis — Sea Star rescued.

Within hours of Misty’s departure, Paul and Maureen find little Sea Star in a cove on Assateague, and the whole family is delighted and relieved. Once this plot is finally under way, the novel does a 180 and becomes classic Marguerite Henry – the story of an orphaned colt wasting away in sorrow, and of an injured mare pining for her own lost foal and how they are brought together to grow strong and heal the sorrows of an entire family with the help of a lot of myrtle leaves. Sea Star, with his toothpick legs and wondering expression, is adorable and Wesley Dennis’s illustrations are a wonderful accompaniment once more. There are no dubious motivations amongst the native Chincoteaguers – nope, real salt of the earth types one and all. Scrumptious food descriptions are back and there’s even some humour. The first half of the book is all but forgotten, and yet…

I don’t like giving a negative review of a Marguerite Henry book. However, since Misty worked perfectly well as a standalone, I have to say that Henry’s first instinct was right. I will say in its favour that, while I can nitpick its value system, Sea Star would actually make a tremendous vehicle for discussion with even a young child and the writing remains on the same strong read-aloud level of Misty. It’s not essential, but as I said at the start, children will still enjoy the majority of the story.

See Also: Misty of Chincoteague.

Parental Guide, with mild spoilers.

Violence: Sea Star is found beside his mother’s body, but that is hardly described. Both Sea Star and the injured mare are implied to be well on the road to recovery by the end of the book.

Values: College is worth any price. If you love something, let it go. Share your greatest treasure with the impoverished world. Love is a healing force that helps us overcome our sorrows.

Role Models: Obviously the whole plot is meant to make the Beebes look virtuous and self-sacrificing, and it’s obvious what I think about that.

Educational Properties: If it’s used as a read aloud, it could spark some strong feelings and interesting discussion. Always a good thing.

End of Guide.

I’m now halfway through the series, with one more sequel and a final spinoff volume to go.

Up Next: Back to the Anne novels.

Misty of Chincoteague – Marguerite Henry

On December 9, 2019May 21, 2020 By nymithIn 1000 Good Books List, Adventure, American writers, Animal Stories, Children's Classics, Horse Stories, Read Alouds, Set in Virginia1 Comment

Remember when you could buy a pony for 100 dollars? Me neither.

Related image Title: Misty of Chincoteague (Misty #1)
Author: Marguerite Henry (1902-1997)
Illustrator: Wesley Dennis (1903-1966)
Original Publication Date: 1947
Edition: Aladdin Paperbacks (1991), 174 pages
Genre: Animal Stories. Adventure.
Ages: 5-11
First Line: A wild, ringing neigh shrilled up from the hold of the Spanish galleon.

Paul and Maureen Beebe are growing up on their grandparent’s horse farm in the isolated commuity of Chincoteague Island. Tired of bonding with colts that always get sold, the siblings set out to earn 100 dollars to spend at the annual Pony Penning Day, when the wild herds on Assateague Island are rounded up and the colts auctioned. Paul and Maureen have their hearts set on an elusive mare called the Phantom, who has avoided capture two years in a row. Faced with the challenges of earning enough money, capturing and gentling her, an added complication is thrown into the mix when Pony Penning Day arrives and reveals that this year the Phantom has a colt of her own…

The Newbery list is certainly hit-and-miss but (with a few notable exceptions like The Phantom Tollbooth and Little House on the Prairie) they have historically been quite good at recognising children’s classics when they appear on the American stage and that’s exactly what the 1948 Honor Book Misty of Chincoteague is. A horse story that can appeal to a broad age range, full of action and purpose as the protagonists dedicate themselves to a series of goals, yet devoid of the emotional punches that are found in other famous horse books like Black Beauty. The ending is memorable and wistful, but without tragedy, and the story as a whole is sunny, lacking any villains beyond circumstances that must be overcome. With Paul and Maureen sharing viewpoints, it even has equal appeal to boys as well as girls, something that has become unusual in the genre.

Wesley Dennis — Paul heading off to work.

Marguerite Henry instills her book with a strong sense of place right from the start, not only with the wild herds on Assateague but also the fishing community of Chincoteague, whose independence forms a parallel to the ponies, for these men and women are also making do with less, cut off from the larger nation yet thriving. There’s a real American ethos within the book and it captures a place in time with its own culture and cuisine (there’s a small pile of food descriptions with oysters, cornbread, clam fritters, dumplings and wild blackberry jam). Henry spent a great deal of time on Chincoteague, and even though she changed the larger “true story” drastically, I have no reason to distrust her eye for detail, which even renders the old-timers’ accent through Grandpa and Grandma Beebe:

Maureen: “…if you came here to Pony Ranch to buy a colt, would you choose one that was gentled or would you choose a wild one?”
Grandpa chuckled. “Can’t you jes’ see yer Grandma crow-hoppin’ along on a wild colt!”
“Thar’s yer answer,” laughed Grandma, as she cut golden squares of cornbread. “I’d take the mannerly colt.”

The real draw are the horses, of course, and Henry supplies two perfect equine characters in the Phantom and Misty. The Phantom has a map of the United States on her withers – a clear cut case of symbolism in a patriotic novel. “Lad,” [Grandpa] said, “the Phantom don’t wear that white map on her withers for nothing. It stands for Liberty, and ain’t no human being going to take her liberty away from her. … The Phantom ain’t a hoss. She ain’t even a lady. She’s just a piece of wind and sky.”

https://78.media.tumblr.com/a995b367ed67762425a704e360e5c91e/tumblr_oigdbozsVX1tedwcmo7_500.jpg — Paul’s first glimpse of the Phantom and Misty.

The only thing that really tames the Phantom is her “colt” (islanders in this book refer to every young horse as a colt, which I thought only referred to males), whom Paul names Misty. Misty drives none of the plot – she is the counterweight to the Phantom’s wildness, playful and domestic by nature, belonging to Chincoteague from the moment her hooves land on the shore. Slowly and dejectedly the wild ponies paraded through the main streets of Chincoteague. Only the Phantom’s colt seemed happy with her lot.

I would be remiss not to single out Wesley Dennis as a large part of Misty of Chncoteague‘s charm, as he always supplies the perfect image for every scene. The personalities of every character, horse and human, shine through and equal the best of Garth Williams’ work. Dennis draws comic characters without caricaturing and his equines emote without crossing the line and losing their realism. His dramatic talents also enhance the impact of what is a fairly short and low-stakes adventure tale, making the risks feel bigger and the triumphs sweeter. Nicely done.

https://thehaynesblog.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/il_fullxfull-291177439.jpg — Maureen surrounded by wild ponies – a brief line of text given epic treatment.

I have no complaints to make. Misty of Chincoteague was quite nearly as enjoyable today as it was when I was a child. It makes a lovely addition to the family bookshelf and would make a good read-aloud for high summer, maybe even for 4th of July week given how civic minded the story is. For more on the 1940s value system this is steeped in, check out the Parental Guide below.

Violence: The book opens with a Spanish shipwreck in which the original Assateague ponies, destined for the mines of Peru, successfully swim to shore. All hands perish in the storm, with Henry softening that blow by depicting the Captain as gold-hungry and indifferent to the ponies’ welfare. In the present day, there’s a high ratio of distressed ponies, due to their captivity on Pony Penning Day and the auction. None are injured or die.

Values: Hard work and responsibility as Paul and Maureen seize any type of summer employment they can find to earn money for the Phantom – and then do it all over again to pay for Misty. They have a whole series of chores round the Ranch and almost every time the grandparents are depicted they are in the middle of work, whether that be feeding chickens, preparing food, maintaining the horses or doing laundry.

Misty is very patriotic in tone – Pony Penning revenue goes toward maintaining the island’s fire department, school is “what me and Grandma pays taxes for,” every roundup man is well-known by his day job and the island is a well oiled machine with every man, woman and child doing their part to keep it running. The kids have a great deal of independence and are allowed their own goals and their own time to tell about them, but once Paul is picked for the roundup crew he is expected to obey his leader’s orders (and is promptly rewarded when following instructions leads him to the Phantom). There’s even material about fair play, as Paul and Maureen pull a wishbone to decide who gets to race the Phantom, and liberty, when Paul makes a hard decision about the Phantom’s future.

Role Models: Paul has a keen head for business but also a romantic streak, and he’s the one most attuned to the Phantom. Maureen is given less to do, which disappointed me growing up, and a friend of mine found several disparaging remarks (such as “Quit acting like a girl, Maureen!”) concerning as a parent. As such, I paid close attention to the topic and found the only source of the quotes to be Paul, which could easily be attributed to big brother posturing. Such occasional put-downs never stop him from treating her as an equal partner in their plan to buy and gentle the Phantom and the actual text never devalues Maureen’s (or Grandma Beebe’s) contributions. It’s certainly true that she doesn’t get any action scenes, but it’s also true that not everything has to be about girls. There are thousands of horse and pony books catering to the pre-teen girl demographic, books which I devoured indiscriminately and which rarely ever give equal time or weight to male characters – such that when I first read Misty I assumed that Maureen should naturally have a greater bond with the Phantom just because she was a girl. No one ever labels that a cause for concern, so a mix of recent and vintage horse books would balance out nicely.

Aside from that, not a lot to say. Every character is trustworthy and fair and probably most kids would wish they had grandparents like the Beebes. Oddly, Paul and Maureen’s parents are absent due to being in China (I guess Henry thought orphaning them would be too predictable).

Educational Properties: I would normally advise researching the true story behind the fiction, but in this case there is no historical sweep that would prove schoolworthy and Misty is meant for such young readers that there’s no point digging for disillusion here.

On the other hand, the wild ponies have been observed for decades, which offers quite a lot of information and data for a bit of natural science. Theories on how the ponies arrived on Assateague are also well worth researching. Those in nearby states might want to take a trip to the islands as well.

End of Guide.

I have copies of all three sequels to Misty, which I will be posting in the next few months. I can then embark on her larger bibliography, which consists mostly of other horse stories (one of which won the Newbery Medal), many of which were also illustrated by Wesley Dennis.

Up Next: A springtime poetry collection by Cicely Mary Barker.

The Western Corner of the Castle

Tag: Wesley Dennis

Stormy, Misty’s Foal – Marguerite Henry

Sea Star: Orphan of Chincoteague – Marguerite Henry

Misty of Chincoteague – Marguerite Henry