Desperately seeking children's book about two girls who...ride horses?
July 28, 2014 10:12 PM   Subscribe

Okay, this is the longest of long shots, so feel free to roll your eyes. ;) I'm looking for a 1970's-ish picture book about two girls who are best friends and enter a magic world at the bottom of the garden, where they ride horses.

For years, I've been hoping to stumble across a book that I was obsessed with as a child. I used to get this book out of the public library over and over again, when I was about...four? Five? So it would have been around the mid-to-late '70s. The book could have been published much earlier, of course, but I seem to remember it being fairly contemporaneous.

It was a picture book, hardcover with shiny coloured pages and the text superimposed on the pictures. It was about two little girls playing together who go to the bottom of the garden and enter another world through a hole in a bush. Once go through the bush/portal, they find themselves with horses beneath them (I think one is white and one dark), and go galloping off with manes and long hair flying. At the end of the book, they return back through the hole to the garden, sans horses.

I was so in love with this book, I actually dream about it still sometimes, yet I have no idea about the author or title. I know this is ridiculously vague, but any ideas would be much appreciated.
posted by Salamander to Grab Bag (6 answers total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
 
Everything about your description, except the hole in the bushes, reminds me strongly of one of my favorite childhood books, The Magic Carousel. Sisters ride a carousel in Central Park but the horses come alive, break free, and gallop through the city. Here are some of the illustrations, one showing "manes and long hair flying". Like I said, no hole in the bushes, but it is very much a sense of entering another world when the horses leave the carousel.
posted by donnagirl at 6:16 AM on July 29, 2014


Actually when I saw this question I went to my shelf and looked at The Magic Carousel, but I doubt it's the right book. There is no garden. The girls are with their parents, get on the carousel, and the magic starts.
posted by tomboko at 9:14 AM on July 29, 2014


Hmmm...this doesn't match your descriptions exactly, but pretty close. Could it be "Best Friends" by Steven Kellogg? Here
posted by blithecatpie at 9:34 AM on July 29, 2014


I remember this book too. 99% sure it's an English book, so US kids might not be familiar with it. It had a pretty Back of the North Wind vibe to it.
posted by fshgrl at 11:41 AM on July 29, 2014


Best answer: Possibly Most Beloved Sister by Astrid Lindgren?
posted by kuma440 at 9:26 PM on July 29, 2014


Response by poster: OMG - I'm not 100% sure - the illustrations look different, but maybe I had a different edition...but I think it was Most Beloved Sister!! Thanks everyone for trying (and especially kuma440)!
posted by Salamander at 4:42 AM on August 1, 2014


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