Pie in the Sky: Book Four of the Horses of Oak Valley Ranch - Hardcover

JANE SMILEY is the author of many books for adults, including Private Life, Horse Heaven, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning A Thousand Acres. She was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2001.
            Jane lives in Northern California, where she rides horses every chance she gets. She is also the author of four other novels for young readers in the Horses of Oak Valley Ranch series:The Georges and the Jewels, A Good Horse, True Blue, and Pie in the Sky.

Gr 5-8-Abby Lovitt, first introduced in A Good Horse (Knopf, 2010) returns. The teenage daughter of a respected horse trader, Abby can't remember not riding. She loves her beautiful but green horse, True Blue, but is stuck at an impasse training him. Her time is constrained even more when she is tapped to ride Pie in the Sky, a prize jumper whose owner, Sophia, no longer wants to ride. While working with Pie, Abby realizes how much she loves riding and how important it is to her to do something she's passionate about. Sophia recovers her desire to ride after seeing Abby having so much fun on Pie. Abby also learns lessons about pride and the importance of family and friends. Her relationships with her family are well drawn, but her friends are one-dimensional and often introduced without explanation. The northern California setting and late-1960s time frame seem tacked on-they are not important to the story. Abby does much thinking and internal reasoning, making this a very character-centered novel. The book contains many details for horse-crazy readers, and the intended audience will probably be familiar with the specialized equestrian vocabulary frequently used. Purchase for fans of the first book.-Lisa Crandall, Capital Area District Library, Holt, MIα(c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.