Endurance Ride

Saddle Club #69

by Bonnie Bryant

The Saddle Club girls are participating in a new kind of horseback activity--endurance riding. They'll have to condition their horses and themselves for the grueling contest if they plan to make it across the finish line. But an annoying rider named Kristie keeps getting in the way. Carole, Stevie, and Lisa are pretty sure they can finish the competition. The question is: Can they endure Kristie?

Genres: Horses, Childrens, Young Adult, Contemporary, Middle Grade

144 pages, Paperback

First published February 27, 2013

About the author

American author of children's books. She is best known for creating the intermediate horse book series The Saddle Club, which was published from October 1988 until April 2001. The Saddle Club chronicled the adventures of thirteen-year-old Lisa Atwood and twelve-year-olds Stephanie "Stevie" Lake and Carole Hanson. The series was static in time; the girls never aged in 101 books, 7 special editions, and 3 Inside Stories.

Bonnie Bryant also wrote two spin-off series: Pony Tails, aimed at beginning readers, and Pine Hollow, aimed at teenage readers. The 16 Pony Tails books followed the lives of eight-year-olds May Grover, Corey Takamura, and Jasmine James. Pine Hollow featured Carole, Lisa, Stevie, and their new friends in a series set four years after The Saddle Club. Unlike The Saddle Club, Pine Hollow conformed to a realistic timeline. The 17 books took place over the span of less than a year. Later a television show called The Saddle Club, based on the books, was filmed in Australia.

Bonnie Bryant wrote at least 38 The Saddle Club books and 2 Pine Hollow books herself; after that they were taken over by a team of ghostwriters, a common practice in long-running children's book series. Ghostwriters for the Saddle Club and Pine Hollow books included Caitlin Macy (sometimes credited as Caitlin C. Macy), Catherine Hapka, Sallie Bissell, Kimberly Brubaker Bradley, Helen Geraghty, Tina deVaron, Cat Johnston, Minna Jung, and Sheila Prescott-Vessey.

Bonnie Bryant is also the author of many novelizations of movies, including Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Karate Kid, and Honey, I Blew Up the Kid, written under her married name, B.B. Hiller. She also collaborated in the ghostwriting of The Baby-sitters Club Super Special #14: BSC in the USA, published under the name of its creator, Ann M. Martin.

Bonnie Bryant was born and raised in New York City. She met her husband, Neil W. Hiller, in college, where they both worked on the campus newspaper. They had two sons, Emmons Hiller and Andrew Hiller. Neil Hiller died in 1989. Many of Bonnie's books are dedicated to him.
***from wikipedia.org

Reviews

[Sarah Ryder · Rating 3 out of 5]

While The Saddle Club was never one of my favorite or even well liked series when I was younger (the characters tended to annoy me a lot, haha), I did enjoy this book, mostly because the characters WEREN’T annoying in this one and that it’s one of the very few fiction books that talks about Endurance riding. The climax is also really intense and it’s a great example to both kids and adults on how to act in such a scary situation.

My only problem in rereading it this time was how much repetitive information about characters and such was in here (a fairly common thing in this type of series, sadly) and the telling nature of the story, but despite those faults this is, in my opinion, one of the best books in this series by far.


‼️Content‼️

Language: geez; gosh

Violence: a horse and rider fall down a mountainside; injuries and blood (not detailed)

Other: in the past a character’s mother died from cancer in hospice

[Tarissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think this is one of the BEST Saddle Club books I've read. It has a whole lotta stuff packed into it! I found myself learning (right alongside the Saddle Club girls) about a whole new type of riding. Plus, there's a real sense of adventure is this one -- especially when one of our beloved characters gets injured on the trail. Gasp! Really good read.

[Claire · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shit got a LOT more real than usual in this book (potentially life-threatening injury, the first really explicit conversation about Carole's mother dying that I remember reading), but it was competently done and a very good example of the genre - good first aid depictions, and middle-grade appropriate character growth.

[Stephanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This story started in the middle of an adventure, with only flashbacks to set it up. Not a big fan of that style.

[Sally · Rating 3 out of 5]

Whee, one of the few I actually remember reading! At least I think I do - if memory serves, the girls are are all raar over know-all Kristie, but then it turns out that they do a whole ton of dumbass things because they're not used to these kinds of rides, and it would have been sensible if they'd just sucked it up and listened to Kristie (who IS used to it) in the first place.