Identify this mid-80s girls' book

June 24, 2010 1:54 AM

Trying to find out the title of a book or series of books from when I was a kid: time travel on horseback a key plot element, of course.

I want to get these, if I can, for my kids. I had this one book when I was about 9 - so mid-80s. I think it was published by Scholastic because parents could order the books through catalogues brought home from school.

The things I remember are these:

• The main character was a girl, living with her mother. I think the parents had recently split, maybe, or the dad was dead. The mother had taken a job as a caregiver in a rest home (?) and they lived in the rest home itself. I know they lived in the Annex.
• There was a white or silver horse that the girl would see sometimes, and when she rode it one day she went back in time to (maybe) WW2, where the rest home served another purpose. She interacted with the people there, and returned to her present by riding the horse again.

I don't know if it was a series, but it seems like the kind of book that could easily be a series. I think it might be a bit obscure, not being popular enough to warrant widespread publication - this is a long shot but it's been bugging me for a while now. Thanks in advance!

posted by tracicle to Writing & Language (9 answers total)

Bit of a stretch....but...

Playing Beatie Bow?
posted by TheOtherGuy at 3:48 AM on June 24, 2010

Guessing, and don't remember the horse but... Blossom Culp books by Richard Peck?
posted by ansate at 7:35 AM on June 24, 2010

Do you recall what country they lived in?
posted by iconomy at 9:05 AM on June 24, 2010

Long shot but you may be thinking of one of the Wrinkle in Time series by Madeleine L'Engle..
posted by greensalsa at 10:24 AM on June 24, 2010

Gotta be A Wrinkle in Time. Could it have been a centaur? This is the cover of the edition that I had.
posted by cmoj at 11:39 AM on June 24, 2010

If it's a L'Engle book, it'd be A Swiftly Tilting Planet, but it doesn't sound like it to me.
posted by itesser at 11:57 AM on June 24, 2010

Response by poster: No, was definitely a horse. The story was set in England (or at least the UK). It rained a lot.
posted by tracicle at 1:00 PM on June 24, 2010

Possibly: Can I Get There by Candlelight?
posted by alyxstarr at 7:01 PM on June 24, 2010

Response by poster: Maybe, alyzstarr. I'll find a copy and check it out. There is definitely overlap to what I remember, although I'm not sure yet.
posted by tracicle at 12:13 AM on June 27, 2010