The Black Stallion

I expected the unabridged version of The Black Stallion. I don’t want this first grade version.

The Black Stallion started me on the road to becoming a lover of reading. This was the first book I wrote a book report on in grade school. Many reports later and the reading of all Farley's books, I.e. Son of the Black Stallion and many more. I now am buying books in this series for my great granddaughter who is nine and can read on a high school level.

I just had to say something about the other two reviews for this book. This hardback version is the original and does have illustrations and very beautiful ones at that. The reviewer that said there were no illustrations was mistaken and most likely meant the paper-back version. I am in my seventies and read this book as a child. It started my ever- long interest in horses and I still think it is one of the best books ever written about horses. I just bought a copy for my eight-year-old niece and know she will love it as I did. Buy this version if you want illustrations.

The Black Stallion is a very breath-taking book. It's about a boy named Alec Ramasay. Who is heading home in New York City after spending two months in India with his Uncle Ralph. He spends a few weeks at sea on the DRAKE when one day they came to a small Arabian port. At the port was a small crowed of cheering people. Suddenly Alec heared a shrill, loud, clear whistle. He then saw a mighty black horse rear on its hind legs, its forelegs striking out into the air. A white scarf was tied across its eyes. The crowed broke and ran. Its body was completly, pitch black excepted for a white streak across its eye. With a big fuss, the clearly wild stallion was loaded onto the ship. For Alec, it was love at first site. Each night, Alec would take

The Black Stallion is a wonderful story about a teenage boy's relationship with a wild Arabian stallion who rescues him from drowning after a shipwreck. The two are isolated on an island for many weeks and learn to respect and care for each other. Alec tames the Black with love, and rides him all over the island. The book progresses through their rescue and trip home, where Alec boards the Black with his neighbor Henry, a retired race horse trainer. Alec soon discovers that racing the Black professionally is not as easy a galloping wildly across the island, but he's determined to try, and with Henry's help, brings the Black to a stunning victory against the fastest horses in the country!It's a shame that Random House has let all but 4 books in this series go out of print. Also, a succession of cover illustration changes was not a good idea either. The original paperback illustrations by artist Ruth Sanderson were INCREDIBLE! I can remember reading the books when I was about 8, and drinking in the lavish, dangerous looking images of the Black and the other horses. The re-done illustrations are clumsy, and do not portray Walter Farley's legendary horses as he intended them, i.e. wild and dangerous! Perhaps someone at Random House will get a clue, and re-issue the entire series with the original covers! Please!

Others have expressed these thoughts but I must chime in and support them. This is a great book for children. I first read it when I was nine and my sister and I re-read the entire series many times. There are women working the backstretch on race tracks who say that it all started with Walter Farley.The movie, though gorgeous to look at, is an insipid version of the story--minus the sexiness, danger, and complexity of relationships. (In the movie the director neatly kills off the father and makes the hero much younger to remove all that troubling complexity!) Many years ago in Seattle I attended a screening of this film and had an opportunity to politely explain my feelings to the director, Francis Ford Coppola. Basically he said something like getting rid of all the talking made the film more mythic. Oh well: to some extent I can see his point. Films are difficult to make and have their own requirements--but why don't they make up their own stories instead of taking so much license with good books? As at least one reader's review has commented, the decision to redo the illustrations for the early Black Stallion books was misguided. The originals have a wildness and excitement to them that later editions lost. If your child really likes these books, finding an old edition with those drawings would be a wonderful gift. Like all good books for children, The Black Stallion contains undercurrents of troubling feeling and presents strategies for working those out, or at least living with them. Don't we all have something wild living in our back yard that occasionally jumps the fence? This notion was exciting to me as an adventurous little girl --and as a nearly 50-year-old who is still crazy for horses, it still works for me.--A reader and parent from Olympia, Washington