Where Horses Run Free: A Dream for the American Mustang - Hardcover

Cowley, Joy; Layne Johnson

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1590780620 ISBN 13: 9781590780626

Publisher: Boyds Mills Press, 2003

Synopsis

She is the lead mare of a herd of wild horses that run the range. When people come to capture them, she leads the herd in a run for safety. But trucks and helicopters drive the horses into pens. Imprisoned behind barbed wire, the fire in the mare's heart is reduced to embers. Her spirit is almost broken--until a cowboy comes and promises to set the horses free. Joy Cowley's deeply felt story, with breathtaking illustrations by Layne Johnson, is based on the true story of Dayton O. Hyde, founder of the Institute of Range and the American Mustang, a nonprofit organization that owns the eleven-thousand-acre Black Hills Wild Horse Sanctuary in the Black Hills of South Dakota. It is a special place, where the wild horse is allowed to be wild.

About this title

About the Author:

Joy Cowley, author of more than three hundred books for children, is best known to young readers as the creator of Mrs. Wishy-Washy. Her other titles include The Rusty, Trusty Tractor; Mrs. Goodstory; and The Video Shop Sparrow. Ms. Cowley lives in New Zealand.

Layne Johnson has illustrated a number of books for young readers, including Ben, King of the River by David Gilfaldi, and On the Day His Daddy Left by Eric J. Adams. He lives in Houston, Texas.

From School Library Journal:

Grade 1-4-It's impossible to read this book with a dry eye. Poignant oil paintings, most covering full spreads, depict the collective fear, flight, captivity, and dejection of the herds of "useless" wild mustangs corralled onto Bureau of Land Management feedlots. Focusing on one horse and her cowboy rescuer (identified in the flap copy as the real-life Dayton O. Hyde), Cowley and Johnson do an admirable job of condensing the story of Hyde's dream, doggedly fulfilled, of creating an 11,000-acre South Dakota sanctuary for these displaced animals. Sentimental? Sure (and the irritating, stanzalike layout of the text doesn't help). However, readers come away with a feeling of overwhelming optimism shown by one man's ability to correct an injustice. The illustrations superbly convey the magnificence of the wilderness and the adaptation of rejuvenated, galloping residents to it.
John Sigwald, Unger Memorial Library, Plainview, TX
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About this edition

• Publisher: Boyds Mills Press
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 1590780620
• ISBN 13: 9781590780626
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 32