Colt - Hardcover

Springer, Nancy

3.9

86 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0803710224 ISBN 13: 9780803710221

Publisher: Dial Books, 1991

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A young boy with a crippling disease learns, through a horseback riding program, to overcome his own anxieties and to help others in dealing with their own problems.

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About the Author:

Nancy Springer has published forty novels for adults, young adults and children. In a career beginning shortly after she graduated from Gettysburg College in 1970, Springer wrote for ten years in the imaginary realms of mythological fantasy, then ventured on contemporary fantasy, magical realism, and women's fiction before turning her attention to children's literature. Her novels and stories for middle-grade and young adults range from contemporary realism, mystery/crime, and fantasy to her critically acclaimed novels based on the Arthurian mythos, I AM MORDRED: A TALE OF CAMELOT and I AM MORGAN LE FAY. Springer's children's books have won her two Edgar Allan Poe awards, a Carolyn W. Field award, various Children's Choice honors and numerous ALA Best Book listings. Her most recent series include the Tales of Rowan Hood, featuring Robin Hood’s daughter, and the Enola Holmes mysteries, starring the much younger sister of Sherlock Holmes.

Ms. Springer lives in East Berlin, Pennsylvania.

From Kirkus Reviews:

Colt, who has spina bifida, is introduced to riding in a special program for handicapped children. Reluctant at first, he soon learns that being on a horse not only strengthens his muscles but empowers him with new independence and courage, a better route to self-identity than his former brattiness. Meanwhile, his mother Audrey marries Brad, a gentle, sympathetic man with a teenage son (``Rosie'') and a daughter Colt's age. What would normally be a minor incident--Colt's mount jolts him when he starts to trot--is life-threatening for Colt, and Audrey reluctantly decides that the riding must stop. Colt becomes despondent, but then Brad comes up with an especially safe mount and the family agrees that, as Colt has pleaded, the rewards of his riding are worth the risks. Indeed--in a satisfying scene dramatizing how Colt can overcome his limitations, he rescues his stepbrother when the two are alone together and Rosie is injured. The plot here is familiar, the details concerning spina bifida obviously purposive. But Springer's characters, striving to create a loving new family, come alive as exceptionally warm, nice people who try to solve their unavoidable problems without dissipating emotional energy in rivalries or self-pity. Sweet but not saccharine: a satisfying horse story with fine extra dimensions. (Fiction. 10-13) -- Copyright �1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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