The Boy on a Black Horse [Hardcover]

Nancy Springer (Author)

Book Description

Age Level: 10 and up

Intrigued by the mysterious and angry Romany boy who joins her class, thirteen-year-old Gray finds that he shares her love of horses but harbors a dark secret.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 5-9-Horse-crazy Gray, 13, is drawn to a strange new boy who calls himself Chav. She sees him riding a beautiful black stallion, follows its trail, and learns that he is living on his own with his younger brother and sister. When the children become ill, Gray and her aunt (with whom she lives) take them in, but Chav is afraid to open up to them. He has run away from his rich, white father whose abuse killed his mother, and he clings to a romantic ideal of returning to the Gypsy life his mother once led. He doesn't want to trust non-Gypsies, but Gray and her aunt are weakening his defenses. His anger and confusion mount until he decides to kill the boys from school who have teased him and then commit suicide. Gray intercepts him and he breaks down and confides his fears. Springer makes these characters and their troubled lives convincing. Glimpses of Chav's thoughts written in his journal punctuate Gray's first-person narrative. Romantic young readers will be as fascinated as she is by the Heathcliff-like Chav and his confused siblings. While the ending is a bit too tidy, this is a satisfying and often compelling story with vivid, memorable characters. It's more of a psychological than sociological novel and should appeal to horse-story fans and problem-novel readers alike.
Louise L. Sherman, Anna C. Scott School, Leonia, NJ
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Gr. 6-9. When her new classmate Chav, a Gypsy, recites an original poem about "the black horse of anger," middle-school equestrian Gray is enchanted. Later, spotting Chav and his younger brother and sister on a beautiful black stallion, Gray follows them to an abandoned farm and learns they are abused runaways. The story line requires considerable suspension of disbelief. Among other things, it seems that Chav's father has got away with beating his wife to death. Rather than the word Gypsy, Springer uses the term Rom, which is preferred by members of the group, and she confronts such negative stereotypes as the roaming thief, but her physical description of the youth ("His fierce dark eyes looked wild") is exotic. Still, the restrained writing style, true-to-life dialogue, and smooth integration of the first- and third-person narratives create a convincing portrait of an abused child: his inner turmoil, lack of self-worth, and tremendous anger, with its potential to erupt into violence. Julie Corsaro

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 10 and up
  
• Hardcover: 176 pages
• Publisher: Atheneum (March 1, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0689318405
• ISBN-13: 978-0689318405
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,004,478 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

"Conform, go crazy, or become an artist." I have a rubber stamp declaring those words, and they pretty much delineate my life. Conforming was the thing to do when I was raised, in the fifties. Even my mother, who spent her days painting animal portraits at an easel in the corner of the kitchen, tried to conform via housecleaning, bridge parties, and a new outfit every spring. My father, who was born into a British-mannered Protestant family in southern Ireland, emigrated to America as a young man and idolized the "melting pot" because at last he fit in. Once in a rare while he recited "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" or told a tale of a leprechaun, but most of the time he was an earnest naturalized American who expected exemplary behavior of his children. My mother was a charming Pollyanna who would not entertain negative sentiments in herself or anyone around her. As their only girl and the baby of the family, I was coddled, yet hardly ever got a chance to be other than excruciatingly good.

My "conform" phase lasted right into adulthood. When I was thirteen, my parents bought a small motel near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and I spent most of my teen years helping them make beds and clean rooms. I did not date until I went to college -- Gettysburg College, all of seven miles from home. it was the height of the sixties, and I grew my hair long, but eschewed pot, protests, and "happenings." Instead, I married a preacher's son who was himself conforming by studying for the ministry. Within a few years I was Rev. Springer's wife, complete with offspringers, living in a country parsonage in southern York County, PA.

Here beginneth the "go crazy" phase.

Because I had never been allowed any negative emotions, I began to hear "voices" in my head. First they whispered "divorce" (not permissible), and later they hissed "suicide". They scared me silly. I couldn't sleep; images of knives and torture floated in front of my eyes even during the daytime; something roared like an animal inside my ears; my wrists hurt; I saw blood seeping out of the walls; panic jolted me like a cattle goad out of nowhere. Is it necessary to add that I was clinically depressed? The doctor gave me Valium and sent me to a shrink. The shrink took me off the Valium and told me I had a problem with anger. (No duh.) The next doctor zombied me on the numbing antidepressants which were available at that time. The next shrink said I had an adjustment problem. And so on, for several years, during which I somehow managed to stay alive, take care of my kids, handle the vagaries of my husband, sew clothing and grow vegetables to get by financially, cook, can preserves, show up at church, do mounds of laundry and publish "The White Hart" and "The Silver Sun"--yet not one of the doctors of shrinks ever suggested that I might be a strong person, let alone a writer. All of them were intent on "helping" poor little me "adjust" to being a housewife, mother, and pastor's wife.

Eventually I became resigned to the fact (as I perceived it) that I was an evil, sinful person with horrible things going on inside my head, and I stopped trying to fix me. I stopped going to doctors or therapists. Somehow I found courage--or desperation--to stop trying to conform or adjust or live a role.

"I am going to start taking an hour or two first thing in the morning to do my writing," I said to my husband.

"Fine," he said. He had reached the point where he would agree with whatever to humor the neurotic wife; to him it was just another of my brain farts. But to me it was the most important sentence I ever spoke. With that statement I stopped being a housewife who sometimes stole time to write, and I started being a writer.

Conform, go crazy--or become an artist.

By becoming a writer--by becoming who I truly was--I became well.

It was so simple. Although it did take years, of course; it takes a long time for good things to grow. Trees. Books. Me. Odd thing about books; they not only nourish growth but show it happening. In "The Black Beast, The Golden Swan" and many other of my early novels, you can see me dealing with the yang/yin nature of good and evil, struggling to accept my own shadow. In "Chains of Gold" and "The Hex Witch of Seldom" I start writing as a woman, no longer identifying only with male main characters. In a number of children's books I come to terms with my own childhood. And in "Apocalypse"--whoa, what a fierce, dark fantasy novel, the first thing I wrote after my income from writing enabled my husband to leave the ministry. I hadn't thought of myself as repressed when I was a pastor's wife, but obviously something broke loose when I shed that role. "Larque on the Wing"--whoa again, another breakthrough book that spiraled straight out of my muddled middle-aged psyche and took me places I'd never dreamed were in me.

It's been a long time since those days when I thought I was an evil person. I know better now, and I love and trust me even to the extent of writing "Fair Peril"--a more perilous novel than I knew at the time, interfacing all too closely with my life. Written two years before the fact, it foresees my husband's infidelity and my divorce. The most painful irony I've ever faced is that once I gained my selfhood, I lost my lifelong partner. He had supported me through episodes that would have sent most men screaming and running, but once I became well and strong, he transferred his loyalty to a skinny, neurotic waif all to similar to the young woman I once was. After supporting him through twenty-seven years of stinky socks, automotive yearnings, miscellaneous foibles, and the career change that put him where she could cry on his shoulder, I found this a bit hard to take. But I wouldn't go back to being Ms. Pitiful. Not for anything.

Now married to a rather remarkable second husband, after living 46 years in Pennsylvania I moved in 2007 to the Florida panhandle, where I spent a year living in a small apartment above the aforementioned husband's hangar in an exceedingly rural (swamps, egrets, snakes and alligators) airport. Now we have a real house about a mile from the airport on higher ground featuring tremendously tall longleaf pine trees with rattlesnakes and scorpions underneath them. Life is an adventure and I mean that sincerely.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars GREAT BOOK!!!, July 18, 2001

By 

Tara (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Boy on a Black Horse (Hardcover)

"Boy on a Black Horse" was FANTASTIC!!! Nancy Springer has a natural writing style, and the story was so good that I read the book all day. I really couldn't put it down! The characters had an impact on me, and I feel as if I know them!! This is a truly unforgetable book that is one of my favorites.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An Irish Leprechaun, March 7, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The Boy on a Black Horse (Hardcover)

I read this book about 5 years ago, and I have still thought about it. I don't think I fully understood what was going on. But now I have!! I liked this book and you shoutl read it if you find these reviews intresting.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It was the BEST!, January 21, 2002

A Kid's Review

This review is from: The Boy on a Black Horse (Hardcover)

Lisa

This book was the best! It was really good that I couldn't put it down! When I read it, it feels as if I'm right there in the book! Like I'm right there standing and seeing the whole scene. You have got to read this book!