Pacific Northwest Writers Association Conference

Hello, friends!

This week I will be away from home (though I leave hubby in charge of garden, cats, grands, house, and the watering - yikes).

The agenda? First I will spend 2 glorious days creating rubber stamped cards with my college roomie. Oh, we may sneak in a summer concert at the U Village and ice cream. But the main event will be creating works of art. Or at least cards that use up a variety of scraps and utilize our 'feeding off of each other' ideas.

Next I will travel to the Pacific Northwest Writers Association Conference that will be held just south of Seattle. I am so excited to meet with other (crazy) writers like myself, learn more about the writing craft, and have the opportunity to mingle with and pitch book ideas to literary agents and editors. Yes, while this time is exhilarating in reference to hanging out with fellow pen pushers, it will also be fraught with nerves, blunders, and stuttering conversations during pitches and chats.

But worth it? Definitely.

I will be offline as far as blogging, so I leave you with a photo of one of my favorite chapter book series - The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis. These books are near and dear to my readers' heart. I was introduced to C.S. Lewis and Narnia in grade school when the librarian, who was probably at her wits' end after I had read every-single-horse-book she had, suggested that I check out The Horse and His Boy.

And that was all it took. From horses to Narnia to wardrobes to Aslan to centaurs and many other fabulous imaginative characters.

Happy Reading! I will see you next week.

The Black Stallion - Chapter Books

The Black Stallion
By Walter Farley
(Random House, 1969 - original in 1941)

Meet a book that I absolutely adored when I was in elementary school. The Black Stallion was one of my favorite and most re-read books in my growing collection of all-things-horse.

Walter Farley created a world for me. That world consisted of danger, excitement, horses, adventure, challenge, horses, and more horses. I didn't care if the main character was a boy. He was doing things that I wanted to do - traveling, getting shipwrecked (ok, I may skip that one), and rescuing a beautiful, strong-willed black stallion to be his own horse. What could be better?

The Black Stallion is still one of my beloved favs. The horse world in Farley's books was my world of escape. In the pages of his writing, I could do and be anything.

Isn't that what good books are for? To let us get away, learn more about ourselves, dream, and give us the chance to live vicariously through the choices and actions of another. A perfect day back then would be reading for hours and then getting up to go ride my own horse, pretending that I was on a similar adventure. Never mind that I was in a desert, my horse was a scrawny nearly spotless Appaloosa and sometimes knot-head, and the extent of my adventure usually ended with me walking home on foot.

I recommend The Black Stallion for elementary and intermediate school students. And any girl who loves horses.


KID KANDY:

1. Watch the movie! For a book adaptation, they did a pretty good job.

2. Get outside and play horses. I remember doing this well into the intermediate years. We were the horses and the riders. Our legs were the horse legs, and the rest of our bodies became adventurers setting out looking for danger. Those 2-legged horses could gallop, trot, switch leads, back up, and do all sorts of great things. Just check out the way our horses could barrel race!

And you've never seen a younger child turn down the chance to ride the horsie (you or I) in their own version of playing horses.

Giddy-up!

Blaze and I in sunny Arizona (1978)

Angie Quantrell is a long-time horse lover. While she is unable to have a horse right now, she dreams of the day when perhaps a 4-legged beauty will allow her to ride away on an adventure, real or make-believe.