HORSE CRAZY

Bonnie and Sam are best friends and horse-crazy. Luckily, they live in Currawong Creek, a small Australian bush town absolutely teeming with horses. The girls know and love each individual animal—so when Sam’s father’s police horse, Drover, swaps herself with an identical brumby (Australian for mustang), they notice right away. Since the girls prefer the new version of Drover, they clean her up and train her to take the old Drover’s place, so well that no one believes they’ve done it. In the second book in the series, The Circus Horse (ISBN: 978-0-8118-6656-9), Bonnie trains a classmate’s games pony to do a circus routine for the school talent show—only to be thwarted when animal acts are banned due to “last year’s poo problem.” When the circus comes to town, however, she’s well-prepared. Lighthearted easy readers with Harvey’s appealing watercolor illustrations, these books have instant charm. The horse problems are far-fetched but not entirely impossible, and the horses are as vivid and complex as the deftly drawn human characters. Saddle Club, step aside. (Fiction. 7-10)