Title: Misty of Chincoteague

Author: Marguerite Henry

Genre: Children’s Literature

Number of Pages: 173  

Despite the small number of pages, this book is very interesting and touching, especially if one likes horses. The plot is set in the United States, in a farm, owned by the Grandparents of a boy and girl, Paul and Maureen. Around the farm, there are many wild ponies, which are caught and sold each year. However before I start talking what this book is about, we have to remember one thing; if a horse wants its freedom, there is no stopping it.

Everyone in the village where Maureen and Paul lived knew about the wildest horse that survived a wreckage of a Spanish ship, and managed to survive alone on a deserted island. Later on that island go more and more inhabitants but all the ponies stayed wild. This wildest pony had a very strange pattern. It was brown all over except for a white patch which had the shape of the map of United States. It’s what made the horse special, and it’s wilderness made it even more special, and it made people even more enthusiastic; who as going to get this horse? It happened that this year, Paul was able to help the people gather the wild horse for sale. And just as they saw a heard the manager told him to chase a slow horse which got out of the team. Paul was angry for he wanted to have the wild horse, called Phantom. Paul followed the horse and realized it was Phantom, with a little foal which Paul immediately decided to call Misty. After all he and Maureen and had done to get Phantom, they would get her foal too! However after a race which is part of the occasion of horse selling, he found out that someone else had bought the foal, Misty, but not Phantom! That was one problem but the other was that Maureen and Paul now couldn't buy Phantom, and the foal was too young to be separated. However he soon learned that the boy who bought the pony was not interested in it any more. So Paul got the pony and the foal in the end! Now the problem was to train a wild mare like Phantom. But it proved to be no problem. Phantom wanted to run, she was used to running in the wild, and it brought her a lot of happiness. However there was something she missed...some wilderness. Every time the wild horses galloped by their manes flying, despite all the fun she was having, there was always some wild in her eyes. She needed the wild. A horse will always have some kind of wild in it, and Phantom lived wild from when she was a foal. She missed her mate as well, The Pied Piper. Paul could see that, but Maureen did not. So one day when the Pied Piper came back for Phantom, Maureen wanted to keep Phantom, to close her behind a gate, so she wouldn't have the chance to escape. However Paul saw that if a horse wanted its freedom he had to give it. And he freed Phantom and let her have freedom again. Maureen was scared that Misty would want to follow it's mother. But Misty stayed. She was used to humans around her. She became Misty of Chincoteague.
I liked this book very much, because it really talks about the habit of horses and it teaches one, that if a horse wants something, it will get it!