Ride a White Horse
Dawn McMillan
28 pages
Full colour
NZ$15.95 incl. postage
US$21.95 incl. postage overseas
Illustrated by Julia Crouth
A beautifully illustrated children’s book for kids aged five to nine
years old.
When the wind blows across the firth, the white horses rear up and gallop into the night. I feel the pattern of the hoof-beats in my dreams and know that I must go with them, to the shadow of a new and mysterious land.
The language is highly descriptive and colourful. The artwork is beautifully detailed and the serious subject matter is reminiscent of the C.S. Lewis era.
Asian Review of Books
Writer Dawn McMillan and illustrator Julia Crouth have succeeded in bringing New Zealand’s coastal landscape alive. The rich colours and textures of bush, sea and sand are conveyed through detailed pictures and vivid descriptions.
NZ Listener
The pictures are really bright, colourful and beautiful. This is a nice story.
Marlborough Express
A book to be shared, a gentle story for quiet, relaxed times... borne along on Julia Crouth’s sweeping seascapes and faithfully depicted bush and shoreline; and her skill in portraying people is again demonstrated.
Well Read
The enjoyment of this book lies in its poetic language and the surreal, dreamlike quality of the illustrations. This is a story for children who enjoy thoughtfulness, and who like to have images built up with words in their minds. Having said that, there is a real and almost shocking poignancy to the story itself: of a little boy who watches the sea, in his dreams riding the wild, white horses in the waves to a shore where his loved, but somehow absent, father who waits for him. An unusual but rich addition to our children’s literature.
NZ Herald
It’s an interesting picturebook for children of about six to eight which takes a gentle and thoughtful look at the death of a father. The child narrator goes on a dreamlike journey to a magical island where he meets his father. The illustrations are very colourful, and reflect the blend of the real and the magical in the story. Useful for classroom studies of death and loss.
Story-Go-Round
Excerpt...
I can watch the sea from my bedroom window. Often the water is flat, a sheet of glass reflecting the colours of the sky. Pink, silver and cobalt blue, as if the night has turned the world upside down. Then the wind comes up, gently at first, whispering across the firth in a line of ripples from the far coast. The sea lifts to ride with the wind and I hear the water fall back onto the beach.
Some mornings the waves wake before I do. I come out of my sleep to hear them, the rhythm of hooves galloping along the shore. I go to the window and see row upon row of white horses, dipping and rearing across the water, tossing their silver manes into the grey morning light.
I throw on my clothes and slip out of the house, across the damp grass to steps leading down to the beach. The horses are best when the tide is nearly full. I sit on the bottom step with the cliff at my back and watch as they race for the space of cream sand between the rocks. I wait for when they rear up with one last burst of energy and crash onto the finishing line. For a brief moment they lie quietly, their manes a fringe of light against the sand. And then they are gone.
Sometimes I hear them in the night, wild and free. I listen as they call with high voices carried on the south-west wind. I feel the pattern of hoof-beats in my dreams. Tonight I hear them again, and i know that I must go with them.
