I probably should have read and probably would have loved this book and the rest of the series when I was 9 or 10. Unfortunately it was not in the public library in Santa Monica, or in the school library either, so here I am feeling like Emily in Beverly Cleary's book Emily's Runaway Imagination, who complained about the chatty horses in the book Black Beauty. The brumbies in Mitchell's book speak in heroic and chivalrous words. Their speechifying is admirable. They are courteous to all: "Greetings, O wombat!" I'm going to say that Mary O'Hara's classic Flicka series about the wild horses of Wyoming, which I recently reread, has more lasting power for older readers. Even the long sections with Thunderhead's point of view avoid excessive anthropomorphism. But I would highly recommend the Brumby books to horse-loving grade school children.

Read all Elyne Mitchell's stories of Brumbies when I was a child. Loved them. Still love them -tend get a bit sappy that way about wild horses..and tend to have flashbacks of her books while photographing horses now. ( )