I changed my mind...

Sometimes when I've read a childhood favorite, it remains a favorite, but more often it loses something in revisiting. Frequently I regret rereading a story, once so beloved, but now become tarnished. I never considered The Black Stallion and the Girl as a favorite, so I approached my reread with less than high hopes for a change in feelings.

And yet, they were there.

With the addition of a new trainer to Hopeful Farm we are once again treated to not only schooling methods and daily care of thoroughbred horses, but also shown the racing world struggling with changes to its long held domination by men. The author explores the inroads women were making into the sport at the time this book was written, some fifty years ago, done with a fairly deft hand, much more realistic than agenda-driven. And through it all Walter Farley shines in his details of the jockey rooms, the paddocks, the announcer's booth, even the starting gates so central to it all.

While I would not place this with the best of the series, it's close. Don't judge this book by its cover, or title. ( )

Alec gets a big surprise when a pretty girl answers his ad for a reliable, experienced stable hand. Gentle and free spirited, Pam is not exactly the person he had in mind for the job.

This book has a special meaning to fans of Walter Farley and that is that the book is written as a way to remember his daughter, who died early in her life. It is meant to share her love of horses and her free spirit with the readers of the series.

For the most part it shows a very dated version of racing, as it should. Women in Alec's time are just starting to find their way in the racing world and are not at all welcome around most stables, certainly not on the backs of horses going down the home stretch. There is a lot of political posturing here about that issue, some of it contrived, most of it written from the understanding that times need to change. You get a lot of the stereotypes in this book that you would associate with such an idea: free spirit meets love struck boy, falls in love but doesn't stay, but eventually melts the heart of a grumpy old man just a little bit.

That big reveal doesn't give away the book for you at all, though, because, as is true with all of Farley's books, you read mostly for the love of racing. This book is no exception and you get several races within these pages. I wish this had been Farley's final book because as much as it wasn't his best, it is far better than the book that follows it in the series. ( )

9/2012 Farley's love song to his vanished daughter is so poignant, so breathtakingly sad underneath, that it's maybe the most meaningful of all the series. Farley pokes at what (one assumes) were some of the arguments he and his daughter had, and attempts to resolve them in her favor. I want, now, to read an in-depth biography of Farley and see how closely my speculations match up to reality. I love the proto-hippie, beginning feminist tone of this book, and the clunky Alec falling in love. It's a keeper.

1/2009 I haven't read this for ages. It was always one of my favorites of the Black Stallion series when I was a girl. Now that I'm someone's mom, and now that I know that Farley wrote this in memory of his own daughter, I find it almost unbearably poignant. Pam is so idealized as to be a goddess, but she fits right in with the perfect horses. The heavy-handed feminism Farley exhibits here feels both real and compensatory. The horse parts are as exciting as ever, but there's a serious underlay to this one that lingers. ( )

Not my favorite of the series. I was always angry that Alec let some stupid girl ride his Black Stallion!! I just didn't like the character of the girl -- most of the later books in the series were not that good. Still, I read them all as a kid because any book with a horse in it (especially the Black Stallion!) is worth reading. ( )