Misty of Chincoteague, by Marguerite Henry

[rachelmanija]

"The Phantom ain't a hoss. She ain't even a lady. She's just a piece of wind and sky."

Very unusually, given that most prologues are dreadful, the prologue of this book, which details how shipwrecked Spanish ponies came to the island of Assateague, is one of the best parts of the book. It's vivid and immediate, and tells a great story in a very few words.

Several hundred years later, it's become a tradition on the island of Chincoteague to round up the wild ponies of Assateague, make them swim across, auction off some of the younger and trainable horses, then swim the remaining ponies back to Assateague. Paul and Maureen, a young brother and sister on Chincoteague, have their heart set on buying the near-legendary wild mare, the Phantom.

There's some beautiful descriptions and great horse-related moments in this book, but the Paul-and-Maureen story is incredibly aggravating. Paul is constantly getting on Maureen's case for being a stupid useless girl, and no one ever stands up for her. She never gets in on any of the heroic action, and the one time she actually gets offered some respect--the kids break a wishbone to see who gets to ride in a race rather than just automatically having Paul ride--OFC Paul wins and Maureen admits he'd ride better anyway.

Copyright 1947 and honestly, considering the number of horse girl books from that time, retrograde even for then.

Misty is adorable but I can see why I didn't hang on to this book, or remember much about it.

Misty, who is a filly (female), is called Phantom's son on the back cover of my edition, which is a modern one with a different cover than pictured. Scholastic, you should be ashamed of yourself.

Comments

[naraht]

I was a big fan of this book as a kid. I'm perfectly prepared to accept that it's actually terrible, but I did manage to persuade my parents to take me to Chincoteague/Assateague when we were on vacation one year. I was about eight and it was a great experience!

[rachelmanija]

It's not terrible at all! Just a bit sexist toward human females.

That vacation sounds AMAZING. Did you see wild horses?

[silverflight8]

I'm glad I'm not the only one who finds prologues to be pretty terrible generally.

[rachelmanija]

Apparently some SFF publishers in the 80s had a rule that all fantasy books MUST have prologues, which resulted in a bazillion excruciating prologues with elves having committee meetings explaining how the Dark Lord got stuck under a big rock millions of years ago.

[luzula]

I would read a good scene with elves having committee meetings though! I wonder what their favorite meeting procedures are--I imagine this is influenced by their long lives.

[movingfinger]

The elf who's really really into the elven equivalent of Robert's Rules of Order, hijacking the meeting with procedural minutiae.

The elf who's wiggling their ears every time the meeting runner looks away from them, causing the elf sitting across from them to have to keep a straight face.

The yes-elf.

The no-elf.

The elf who thinks a subcommittee should be formed ("We ARE a subcommittee, Bongledel!")

The elf who comes in late and has to be brought up to date on proceedings.

[lemonsharks]

"Fine, I'll write your damn coundil of elrond but I won't like it and our readers won't either"

[pauraque]

I read and enjoyed this book as a kid, but the only parts I actually remember are about horses. The human characters have apparently been stricken from my mental record, which sounds like it's for the best.

[rachelmanija]

Hahahaha. The perfect reading memory experience!

[nestra]

Same with me. I think I still have a copy in an omnibus with some of the sequels, but I don't remember anything beyond horses and horses swimming.

[musesfool]

Yes this.

[genarti]

Same!

[genarti]

Is this the one with the grandfather(?) singing the song about how the ponies are "wild and woolly and full of fleas, never been curried below the knees"? Because that lodged in my memory very firmly! Other than that, I had a vague impression of two kids -- and when you described the wishbone-breaking, that rang a bell -- but mostly what I remember is all the horse stuff. The best stuff to remember by far, clearly.

[sholio]

Hahahaha, yes, same, for me too. I remember the shipwreck and Pony Penning very vividly, as well as a scene from the sequel in which a cat has kittens during a hurricane. That is literally the entirety of my memories of this series. On the other hand, I also seem to recall that my general feelings towards the human parts of pony books at that age was "not enough pony" and I have a feeling I reread the pony parts obsessively while completely ignoring anything happening with the humans.

[rachelmanija]

A wise move.

[lilacsigil]

Oh, this is the book with the cat having kittens during a hurricane! I have a very vivid memory of that, but had no idea where it was from. I was not much of a horse book reader, but even I have read this one, with the shipwreck and the swimming ponies.

[athenejen]

I read everything I could find by Marguerite Henry as a kid, so I must've read this one, but I had apparently forgotten basically everything about it, other than a vague memory of wild horses being involved.

My favorite of her books is King of the Wind, the one about the Godolphin Arabian. I re-read that one so many times! I re-read Black Gold and Born to Trot quite a bit, too. But the Misty series never caught my attention as much, for whatever reason.

[rachelmanija]

King of the Wind is my favorite too. The Morocco scenes especially are just gorgeous.

[sheliak]

King of the Wind was my favorite too!

The runner-up for me was the one about the mustang welfare activist--had to look up the title, but it's Mustang, Wild Spirit of the West.

Misty never made much of an impression.

[ethelmay]

I think I read this one and one or two other Marguerite Henrys, but the only one I actually remember is Gaudenzia: Pride of the Palio, which I naturally pronounced PAY-lee-oh as a kid.

[dantesspirit]

This was one of my favorite books as a kid. So much so, I tracked down a copy as an adult.

[selenak]

I renember this book from my childhood! But like your other commenters, I'd forgotten all about the human characters. :)

[rachelmanija]

Just as well.

[lemonsharks]

JUSTICE! FOR! MAUREEN! :|

"Retrograde even for then" is the truest thing I have ever heard about this book and my 11 year old self is fist pumping in vindication

[em_h]

I guess this explains why I remember nothing about it.

[snacky]

I loved this book (and all its sequels) so much as a kid. I do remember Paul and Maureen, and I even remember watching the movie on TV at one point.

Marguerite Henry put out a "biography" called A Pictorial Life Story of Misty (because Misty was a real pony! And Maureen and Paul and all the Beebes were real people!) and that one, I was TOTALLY obsessed with. I checked it out from the library all the time and just read and reread and looked at the pictures and dreamed of having my own Chincoteague pony.

[yhlee]

Wait, there were human characters? I swear I remember the whole book being nothing but wall to wall beautiful, wonderful horses running free and wild.

[rachelmanija]

Yes, yes that is the best way to remember it.

[marjorie1170]

Ah, yes, the ponies being rounded up. That rings a bell.

No memory of the sexism and quite likely didn't notice it. I was a huge fan of Enid Blyton's Adventure Series, and at the time I read them, never seemed to notice that boys had all the gifts (magical connection to animals, pet parrot) and the girls were just there. I'd actually have to reread them to know if the girls did pretty much nothing, as I suspect. Dinah was grouchy and Lucy-Ann cried easily or somesuch.

I of course wanted to be Jack or Philip.

*not to suggest this is the only issue with Blyton! But gosh those books spoke to me.

[twistedchick]

I met Maureen's daughter a few years ago; the family was still raising Misty's offspring at that point. I've been to Chincoteague and Assateague several times -- it is one of my favorite places in the world. The ponies on the Virginia side of Assateague Island are better cared for than the ones on the Maryland side, also, which have become interbred and jug-heady. When you go, you drive over, park by the beach, and then walk -- and you might see any number of ponies nearby or in the distance. But they are all wild; don't try to feed or ride them. One of the common things there that you have to look at twice before you figure it out is when a pony is wandering through tall grass with a white egret on its back: the egret is dining on insects that land on the pony and on the grass, but it looks as if it's standing on the grass... and then it moves along, as the pony moves.

[rachelmanija]

Wow, that's amazing!

[osprey_archer]

I remember reading this book after really looking forward to it (a horse book, after all!) and then feeling disappointed, and although I no longer remember exactly why, it was probably the Maureen stuff. Justice for Maureen!

[oracne]

A good friend of mine went to Chincoteague a number of times with her (recently-deceased) husband, on vacation. I've always wanted to go, because of those books.

[helen_keeble]

I also forced my parents to take me to Chincoteague on vacation purely on the back of this book (and sequels). We were there for the pony swimming and roundup, and it was pretty much bang on as the book depicts (at least, I recall being 100% satisfied at the time; I have pretty much zero recollection of the books now so am working on kid memory).

I may be able to get my mom to find the photo of kid-me with stuffed dead Misty... (YES THEY HAVE HER STUFFED IN A MUSEUM)

I had the Misty Breyer horse figure, and the figure for her colt as a kid, but I don’t think those particular models have survived the intervening 30 years. My parents do still have some of my (vaaaast) Breyer collection at their house, including some of the Black Stallion model range; my kids like to play with them when we visit.

[helen_keeble]

Aha! Here is the model set I had:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Breyer-Misty-Stormy-Model-Book/dp/B000MUYXM4

[rachelmanija]

Now I want to see swimming ponies. But not the nightmare taxidermy.

[duskpeterson]

I stayed at Assateague Island when I was a kid, but alas, do not remember seeing any ponies. On the strength of my memory, though, I wrote a "stranded on an island" scene set there, in one of my stories.

[rosefox]

Funny, I just dug this up and started rereading it to see whether it was worth reading to Kit, who is currently Very Into horses. I think they might like cowboy stories better, but it's awfully hard to find cowboy stories that aren't deeply problematic, so I was hoping Misty had held up at least moderately well. It's funny how all these horse books for horse girls are mostly about how awesome boys are!

[rachelmanija]

There's tons of horse books for girls that aren't like that, or have no boys at all. That's why this one surprised me. They might like Jean Slaughter Doty's Summer Pony and Winter Pony.

[rosefox]

Ah, sorry, I commented in haste and mixed up a couple of trains of thought—one about books for Kit (who's not even really at the read-aloud-chapter-books stage yet) and one about the horse books I read as a kid, which (to my recollection) were all about boys. But I wasn't as deeply into the genre as many ~girls my age, and once I met actual horses and discovered I didn't like them very much, I went back to mystery novels, so I'm sure I missed out on a lot.