Ghost Rider

Saddle Club #24

by Bonnie Bryant

When Lisa, Carole, and Stevie head west to the Bar None Ranch, they have a great time planning a Halloween party with their friend Kate and John, a Native American boy who works on the ranch. The Saddle Club is also thrilled when they get the chance to see a herd of wild horses, including the beautiful gray stallion that Kate wants to adopt. Then John tells the girls a mysterious Indian legend about a gray stallion and warn Kate to keep her distance from the one in the herd. Is John just playing a holloween trick, or is Kate about to ride into danger? The Saddle Club is determined to find out!

Genres: Horses, Childrens, Young Adult, Middle Grade, Animals, Fiction

Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

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

[Sam Wescott · Rating 3 out of 5]

Whoo boy, this one is a little sweaty, huh?

I forgot how damn frequently the girls went out west to hang out at the Bar None ranch. I remember really liking the "Western" books when I was obsessed with these as a kid, but goodness. These children are very well-traveled, huh?

I really, really loved the halloween festival the girl's put on, but the parts that referenced Native Culture were a bit... lacking nuance? I mean, these books are respectful to the natives in it by making sure they have individual personalities and don't fall into some stereotypes. Yes, Christine is first met riding bareback at dawn with her horse and dog named Arrow and Tomahawk, but she also makes fun of the girls for their racist assumptions about her lifestyle. Her mom is a potter, but she makes both traditional pieces for tourists AND modern avante garde sculptures. She makes an adobe dollhouse that is both toy and educational model to auction off at a fundraiser for the reservation. I don't think it's all disrespectful and I'm glad the books don't avoid POC entirely and integrate the local native community into the stories.

But the story about White Eagle and John's mysterious allure are a bit, uh, labored. I found myself cringing at the star-crossed lovers and ghost horse story and I kinda feel like we dived deep into the pool of stereotypes to dredge that one up. It's a fun halloween story and the ghost angle was cute, but... let's just say it's a little dated and reading it in 2020 is a bit cringe-y. Not terrible, but a little sweaty.

[Rena Sherwood · Rating 1 out of 5]

So, the publishers of young adult book series -- how do they keep their jobs publishing crap like this monumentally stupid book? Do they do a conference or zap out a group email and threaten:

GODDAMMIT, PEOPLE, WE NEED STUPID AND WE NEED IT NOW! IF YOU GIVE ME SOMETHING IN ANY WAY LOGICAL, I WILL PERSONALLY PUT YOUR CONTRACT IN THE SHREDDER.

We're not even a quarter of the way through the series, and we have the most bone-headed, unrealistic piece of toxic shit of the series.

So far. I'm really regretting my bright idea of giving this series another try.

This book seemed to be set in some alternative universe. It certainly was written by someone who had .01% knowledge of horses and Native American mythology.

What adult human being with half a brain not only signs up to run a fundraiser, but pays to have it ACTUALLY run by three 13 year olds from across the country? Were there no other adults in Two Mile Creek? Couldn't she have asked the Saddle Club to tell her suggestions over the phone? WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON HERE?

In the previous 23 books, there was some attempt to be realistic. Now, we've suddenly gone off the rails. Other deviations from reality include, but sadly are not limited to:

* Ghosts being real. No, they are fucking not.
* A mare foaling in late October. Mares foal in the spring or summer. Unless there has been some major hormone therapy going on, which I really doubt a random mare on a struggling dude ranch would be put through.
* Coyotes attacking a Mustang herd of 50 horses. They don't do that. They've been known to attack foals, crippled horses, very sick horses, or even an unhealthy horse on its own, but a herd of 50? Only in your dreams.
* A Mustang herd of 50. Jesus Christ -- 20 is usually the maximum number. Most herds are less than a dozen.
* There's no such thing as an albino horse. That is, one with no melanin and pink eyes.
* There is no Native American myth of White Eagle.
* What school for rich kids in the 1990s would let students not attend for two or three days? Especially a private school like Stevie's?
* Mustangs belong to the federal government. There is a bit where Lisa is amazed at seeing so many unowned horses, but that's wrong. Ever since the early 1970s, all wild horses in the West are legally owned by the United States of America.
* The Adopt A Wild Horse or Burro program has most definitely proven not to be a "great program", as it is described not once, but TWICE. Save the ass-kissing for your publishers, Bryant.

[Papillon · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this book in only a couple of days actual reading time. This is the first book by Bonnie Bryant I've ever read. I might would have enjoyed this book as a young middle schooler, but as an adult, most of it is just improbable, silly, and totally out of the realm of possibility. Most of the logistics of the story just kept evoking, "Seriously?" thoughts. As a child, I probably would have thought, "Wow! What lucky girls!" On the other hand, as an adult, I just kept thinking, "Yeah, right. Never in a million years would that ever be possible." If your "horse-crazy" daughter would enjoy a story that is obviously from the late 80s to early 90s, then this quick and easy read would probably pass muster. Outside of that, keep moving down the line, partner.

[Kelly · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not one of my favorites - in fact, I'm pretty sure this one wasn't written by Bonnie Bryant, but by a ghost writer (Carolyn Keene style).

The Western Saddle Club adventures are never going to rank amongst my top tales for the girls, but this one was pretty awful mostly because it incorporates a lot of Native American culture, but doesn't quite seem to get it right. The Halloween party that Stevie organized was fun, creative and pure Stevie, and those sections were the most fun to read. I like that Lisa had a little romantic encounter going on, too. But the tale of the white stallion just felt, well, like a white person wrote it, and everything that followed only soured further that plotline, which was a pretty significant part of the book. It took me ages to finish, as well, because it just wasn't very good and I only picked it up again around Christmas to get it over with and move on to the next in the series.

[Stefanie Robinson · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Saddle Club finds themselves back at the ranch with Kate. They have a great time with Kate, planning a Halloween party and even seeing a herd of wild horses. I have always wanted to see horses in the wild, so that was a neat part of this book for me. They also meet a Native boy who works on the ranch, who tells them a Native legend about a gray stallion. Kate happens to fall in love with a wild gray stallion that she wants to catch and tame. I have never liked the term Indian in a book, which is what is used in this one. I am not a Native person, but Indians are from India. Natives are indigenous to this land. I just hate the term, and I hate it more now that I am an adult. Other than that, the story was entertaining.

[Jennifer (JenIsNotaBookSnob) · Rating 3 out of 5]

These were what I wasted hours upon hours of my 'tween' years reading. At the time, I wanted to read a series of books. I was annoyed by single books where you never found out what else was going on with the characters. Additionally, I was horse crazy and had already read all of the black stallion books owned by my local library. I had already read Black Beauty. I had even moved on to dog books and read everything by Jim Kjelgaard at the local library and other singles like Shiloh, Where the Red Fern Grows, Old Yeller, White Fang and so on.

I was really hitting the end of the dog and horse books at the local library when I begrudgingly started reading these.

So, why did I start reading them? Well, because I'd already tried Nancy Drew (okay, but no animals), Babysitter's Club (blegh) and The Boxcar Children (snore). They were easy for my mom to pick out for me even if I wasn't at the library that day. They were about horses, but, they were also about girls I couldn't relate to.

First off, all of them had parents who could afford riding lessons OR had a stable near them that would trade work for lessons. When I first read that, I was just 'over the moon' excited because it seemed like there was finally hope that I might somehow end up working around and maybe even riding horses. At age 10, I broke out the yellow pages and called every riding stable listed. I also called the ones with ads in the newspaper. Surprise, surprise, nobody took work in exchange for riding lessons. NOBODY. Now, as an adult, I understand that this was more of a thing as late as the 60's and 70's which had pretty much died out by the 90's when I was attempting it. But, these were books which purported to be modern! So, I was pretty disappointed from then on when reading the books. Every time there was some line about how someone's mom didn't have enough money for boots but this kid would still keep their riding lessons by working cleaning stalls, I would think "Liars!" in my head and continue on.

That was when I first began to understand the difference in the social classes. I understood that I was never going to get riding lessons. I understood that if my mom paid for gymnastics classes, she couldn't pay for the leotard, so, all the other girls were fancy in their matching team wear and I wore an old t-shirt and bike shorts and didn't get to go to meets.

Anyways, I kept reading these books even though they felt like lies.. lol

[Sally · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really liked the Saddle Club books set out at the "Bar None" ranch! Great name too :D There was something about the wild horses that I enjoyed a lot.