MAGICALLY MAXIMUS

A horse-loving girl and her princess-obsessed sister conjure a horse straight out of Disney.

Nine-year-old Maddie Phillips and her 6-year-old sister, Evie, have just moved from the city to a run-down farm called Horsetail Hollow. Alas for Maddie, who's ridden at summer camp, there's no resident horse, though there is a barn. Maddie's little sister loves dressing up as a princess and reading fairy tales. When they make a wish together at a mysterious old well on the farm, it's granted in the form of Maximus, the horse from Disney's version of “Rapunzel,” Tangled. After learning to care for and ride Maximus in the royal manner in which he prefers, the girls realize that he needs to go back to his own world so he can complete his role in the fairy tale. The story's conclusion assumes and relies upon the reader knowing the characters from Tangled—and ends with the appearance of Angus, the horse from Disney’s Brave. The book reads like one long tie-in, not badly written but in no way realistic or all that interesting. Illustrations show Maximus and the Tangled characters exactly as they are in the film; Maddie and Evie are typical big-eyed Disney girls. The cover art depicts the girls as light-skinned with dark hair; their race and ethnicity are not specified in the text.

Limp as it is, the name Disney probably guarantees this book an audience.