History from a Horse's Perspective {A Mattie Richardson's Horses in History Review}

My two younger children were excited when we received the Horses in History Series by author Author Mattie Richardson/Appaloosy Books and wanted get started reading them at bedtimes right away.

Both of my younger children enjoy historical fiction and thought it was clever how the four stories - Appaloosy, Dusty’s Trail, Golden Sunrise, and Day and Night - were told from the perspective of horses instead of humans. They also thought it was cool that the first of the books was written by Mattie Richardson when she was just 13 years old.

A Young Author Meets Success!

The author of the Horses in History series, Mattie Richardson, inspires my children, because of her young success.

Now in her twenties, Mattie used to be known as, “North Dakota’s Teen Author,” because she wrote Appaloosy, the first book in Horses in History series, when she was just thirteen years old and published it at sixteen. Now, as an author, speaker, and musician, she has six books to her name with more to come!

My oldest child, although too busy with other things right now to read the Horses in History series was excited to hear about Mattie's young success as he has been writing his own novels and hopes, like Mattie, to be published one day.

My youngest, just nine, used inspiration from Mattie to pen his own short story for a recent writing contest. Having read Horses in History, he chose to use an animal to narrate his own story - a dog. I loved seeing how the Horses in History series inspired his own historical fiction short story!

The Horses in History Series Is Growing

As I mentioned before, the Horses in History series currently includes four books- Appaloosy, Dusty’s Trail, Golden Sunrise, and Day and Night. These paperbacks range from about 60 pages to about 150 pages long and each one contains a table of contents...

key vocabulary...

a few pages of "Blast from the Past" historical information...

information about the author...

and, if you are lucky like us, an autograph from the author!

Because each story is based on a different period in U.S. history, you need not read one book in order to understand another. They each stand alone in content and characters - but come together in that they tell engaging historical fiction through the perspective of horses.

Basically, in each book, the main character is a horse that lives and works in the time period of the novel, so readers get to view history from a different perspective while learning about some important historical themes and details.

So far in the series, you can explore the Pony Express (with Dusty's Trail), the trouble between the US Government and the Nez Perce Tribe (with Appaloosy), the Civil War (with Day and Night), and the Alamo (with Golden Sunrise).

Both history and horse lovers will be excited to hear that more books in the series are in the works and will be coming soon.

Enrichment Guides Are Coming

Some homeschoolers (and others) love to dive deeper when reading historical fiction and Author Mattie Richardson/Appaloosy Books knows that. So, to make things easy, enrichment guides for each book in the Horses in History series are being released.

We received the first of these - the guide for Day And Night - and, although we have not had the time to focus on using it yet, I can say it looks good and will be a boon for those who wish to do more than simply read and chat about the story together as my kiddoes and I have been doing.
The guide is 100 pages long and divided into eight sections:

• Reading Comprehension - daily comprehension questions that can make good review of prior reading or jumping off points for discussion
• Vocabulary - words that apply to each chapter
• History - in depth information about the events, places, and people in the time period of the book
• Geography - info about geographical locations, features, and landscapes
• Horses - equine information for horse lovers
• Biography & Research - suggestions to research a historic figure from the era
• Creating Writing - eight small sections to learn writing techniques in order craft short stories
• Living History - crafts or games related to the story
• Soldier's Life - info on daily life for Civil War soldiers

As other guides are released, I can see the Horses in History series becoming an easy way for parents of children ages 8-14 or so to flesh out full semester or year of U.S. History.

Thumbs Up from My Kiddoes

As I said, I have been reading the Horses in History books to my younger two children during read together times.  . The first one we read was Dusty's Trail and both my kiddoes enjoyed it thoroughly.

My nine-year-old reports:

In Dusty's Trail, a teenage boy named Levi Anderson wants more money for his family, so he sneaks off with his horse named Dusty to join the Pony Express. He joins it and Dusty, Levi, and other Pony Express riders and horses face many problems.

One problem is when Levi ends up having to travel several to several stations in a row and cannot change horses, so Dusty runs the whole way and becomes a well-known horse.

Everybody loves Dusty, until he is a coward and gets scared of indians and bucks, and Levi gets captured by the indians.

Then, Dusty runs back to the station and another horse ends up helping him break free to go rescue Levi. While they are on the mission, some men from a wagon try to catch them and flour falls all over Dusty. Then, Dusty runs into the indian camp to save Levi and the indians think he is a spirit horse.

When Dusty rescues Levi, everybody loves him again.
After that, the Pony Express starts to have trouble, because the telegraph is coming through. Riders are not getting paid, so Levi quits and goes home. On his way home, he buys Dusty a surprise. 

I like this book. It is good. It teaches about the Pony Express. I could read it on my own, but I like it read to me.  I think it is good for ages 7-12. People who like the Pony Express, history, and horses will like it.

My 12-year-old daughter had this to say:

I think this series is engaging. I like how the author writes from the animal's perspective because most people write form a person's perspective. I also like how they are shorter novels and teach about American history. 

 

The only think I don't care for is some of the illustrations.  They don't seem professional. I know both the author and the illustrator were younger people though and I like that.

One of the stories I liked was Appaloosy.

It is about a horse that was originally an Indian horse, but got captured by white men, tired to escape, got captured, escaped again... The horse was high-spirited and did not like anything on his back - people, saddles, blankets.

Then, the horse got sold to a really, really mean owner who beat him trying to make him work because he is high-spirited and has not been broken in yet.

In this time, Appaloosy meets a girl names Faith who is able to ride him because he has trust in her. She is one of the only people who could ever ride him. Faith ends up buying Appaloosy after h'es injured and brings him home. 

After Appaloosy has lived with Faith for a while he's captured by horse thieves along with some other horses from his farm.

Appaloosy and the other horses escape from the thieves ad have to decide if they should go home or go free - and going free has always been Appaloosy's dream.

You'll have to read the book to find out what chose they make.

I would recommend this series to people who are trying to learn about American history and want an engaging, imaginative and want to learn. I also recommend it to people who like horses and people like me who just want to read a story that is not boring.

I have read parts of the books myself and read most of them with my mom and brother. They are not complicated. So, I recommend them to ages 6-13 to read together or alone.

As you can see, both of my children like the Horses in History series. I have enjoyed our read together times with these books, too. 

If you are curious about the books my children did not narrate about:

In Golden Sunrise, a Golden Palomino named Cheyenne lives during the famous defense of the Alamo. His owner Jared becomes a volunteer soldier during the emerging fight for independence and travels to San Antonio, TX, where Jared receives orders to defend Fort Alamo against Mexican forces.  People like Davy Crocket and James Bowie appear and, luckily, Cheyenne makes it through.

In Day and Night, mirroring the tearing apart of families that happened during the Civil War, two sibling horses - Tucker and Shiloh -find themselves on either side of the battle. After one fights with the US Army and one with a young Confederate soldier, they see each other again, having learned quite a bit.

All four books engage children in fiction while giving a window into different periods of US History.

We have enjoyed them and I'd recommend them to others who like history, horses, and being inspired by the writings of a young author.

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