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The Starlight Stables Gang by Esme Higgs

Martha Terry Martha Terry

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    • The Starlight Stables Gang

    Score

    9/10

    Price as reviewed:

    £7.99

    Author: Esme Higgs and Jo Cotterill
    Illustrator: Hannah George
    Published: 2023

    Available as hardback, paperback or Kindle edition
    View now at amazon.co.uk

    About The Starlight Stables Gang

    Superstar equestrian influencer and YouTuber Esme Higgs has teamed up with award-winning author Jo Cotterill to write a fun adventure series, “for animal-mad eight- to 12-year-olds”.

    The Starlight Stables Gang is the first in the series, with the next book due this summer, 2023.

    The central themes are ponies, fun, friendship and mystery. Summer has always loved horses but she never thought she’d be able to learn how to ride them – not with money being so tight at home. Then she discovers the Starlight Stables, where she meets a new gang of friends and learns how to ride in return for helping-out with the horses.

    Summer falls in love with life at the stables and especially with Luna, a beautiful dapple-grey pony. But one day, Summer arrives at the stables to find that Luna has been stolen in the night. It’s up to the Starlight Stables Gang to follow the clues and rescue Luna before it’s too late.

    Review

    This is a sweet story of a penniless child growing up in a single-parent household, who falls in love with horses.

    It captures the excitement of a young girl joining a stable yard, with very little of the bitchiness normally portrayed in similar books. There are good characters; you can really root for them and enjoy the Famous Five-esque adventure of kids taking the law into their own hands – or at least a healthy dose of initiative – in a quest to find the stolen pony. I enjoyed the gripping adventure, particularly as it centred simply around the love of horses rather than competition goals and yard spats!

    The problem-solving is a touch simplistic – Enid Blyton would have a few more twists and challenges – but given the target readership of pre-teens, what does that matter?

    As with most pony literature, it is aimed at girls, especially the huge This Esme fan club. But while girl power is definitely a central theme, one of the four heroes is male, which is probably a fair gender ratio in a stable yard.

    There’s an obvious inclusivity message running throughout the book. Virtually every character has some diverse side to them, teaching young readers never to judge.

    Verdict

    A fun and gripping adventure story for pony-mad girls with a strong message of inclusivity.

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    Martha Terry
    Martha Terry

    H&H features editor
    Martha is an experienced journalist who is mad-keen on dogs of all shapes and sizes. After growing up with assorted liver and white springer spaniels, she enjoyed 14 years with two rescue dogs, one a street dog from Gambia who was abandoned at three weeks old. Now, her constant companion, whether by her feet at her desk or walking cross-country courses, is Fidget, an extremely energetic and habitually muddy black and white springer. Martha has written on topics as diverse as a top horse’s clone to the best GPS trackers for dogs, as well as equestrian and rural matters for Country Life, The Field, The Times, The Spectator and The Telegraph alongside Horse & Hound.
    Martha Terry

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