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Paint

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It's the late 1800s. A Lakota boy finds an orphaned mustang foal and brings her back to his family's camp. Naming her Paint for her black-and-white markings, boy and horse soon become inseparable. Together they learn to hunt buffalo, their fear of the massive beasts tempered by a growing trust in each other.

When the U.S. Cavalry attacks the camp, the pair is forced onto separate paths. Paint's fate becomes entwined with that of settlers, who bring irreversible change to the grassland, setting the stage for environmental disaster. Bought and sold several times, Paint finally finds a home with English pioneers on the Canadian Prairie.

With a great dust storm looming on the horizon, man and horse will need to work together if they hope to survive.

248 pages, Paperback

Published March 3, 2015

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351 people want to read

About the author

Jennifer Dance

5 books42 followers

ACCLAIMED NOVELIST and GILLER PRIZE-winner, JOSEPH BOYDEN, says;

"With Red Wolf, Jennifer Dance has come howling out of the wilderness...and I'm deeply impressed."

JENNIFER IS THRILLED TO HAVE JOSEPH BOYDEN'S SUPPORT.

Jennifer Dance is a Canadian author and playwright who is passionate about justice and equality for all people. She has experienced first-hand where racism can lead. Looking back, she sees that it made her more sensitive to the plight of others. It fueled her passion for equality and justice. It drove her creativity.

Jennifer was born in England, but spent her formative teenage years in Trinidad. After graduating from the University of the West Indies in 1970, she returned to England and married a Trinidadian. A racist attack by Skinheads motivated her and her husband to emigrate to Canada in 1979 where they hoped for a better life for their mixed-race children. RED WOLF is her first published novel.

RED WOLF will soon be followed by PAINT, the story of a mustang on North America's Great Plains. As in her first novel, Red Wolf, Dance brings the issue of unjust treatment of indigenous people into sharp focus. She couples her passion for racial equality, her zeal for environmental issues, and her background in agriculture, with a lifelong love of horses, giving her a wealth of experience to tell this story. From the slaughter of the buffalo and the threatened existence of the Plains Indians, to cattle ranching and pioneer homesteading, Dance takes a Lakota boy and a painted mustang horse down the path to environmental and human catastrophe.







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5 stars
27 (38%)
4 stars
18 (25%)
3 stars
20 (28%)
2 stars
3 (4%)
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3 (4%)
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
Profile Image for Sally906.
1,458 reviews3 followers
March 24, 2015
The target age group for PAINT is 9-12; but I really enjoyed the story, and I certainly think that teens and adults will get a lot from this book. Set in the late 1800s in North America, it follows a little horse through a series of owners. Paint was rescued by a Lakota boy, Noisy Horse, after her injured mother is attacked by wolves. She is a smart little filly and learns very quickly what her role is going to be as she lives with the Lakota people learning to hunt buffalo; and also learning how to be a boss mare. Life seems good, but history has a habit of disturbing life, and the white man moved in without care or regard of the different tribal lands and traditions of their new land, which resulted in the Indigenous people being moved out – often forcibly with guns pointed at them. Paint is separated from Noisy Horse when the soldiers move in to take the Lakota people to a government run reservation. From here she runs through a series of owners and horse sellers, both good and bad, until she ends up with a pioneer family on the Canadian Prairie. Paint’s ultimate fate was a bit ambiguous as it wasn’t very clear to me what happened to her after the big climax – my guesses could go either way – but would have liked closure to that thread.

Paints isn’t the only point of view given – some of the other character’s give their points of view of the events and at the end Noisy Horse returns to his homeland with his granddaughter and tries to explain to her what happened and why remembering the events is important even though she didn’t experience them. He does this so that the people’s traditions can live on in memory if not practice, and maybe understand how their current lifestyle came about. Younger readers may struggle a bit with the last chapter, as it often comes across as a little bit of a sermon on the loss of rights, but is true and needs to be told.

Author, Jennifer Dance, is a very gifted story teller and her written descriptions of the land, the harshness of the pioneer life, and how in their ignorance the early pioneers destroyed the balance of nature resulting in huge natural disasters are so good that the events just come alive on the pages. People and animals die in the story – that is a harsh fact of life – and add long droughts, and endless blizzards and you get an inkling of what the pioneers went through to stay and survive.

It is so easy to tell that Jennifer did whole lot of meticulous research into the story. The world changing events that happened both to nature and the indigenous peoples in the lifetime of one horse makes the mind boggle.

At the very end of the story is an appendix with a historical timeline, glossary and more detail about some of the events mentioned during the story.

Last year I read Jennifer’s debut novel Red Wolf and it was one of my top 10 reads for 2014. PAINT doesn’t quite grab me the same way – but I thoroughly recommend it to anyone who enjoys historical novels, or are trying to explain that period of time to younger readers.

With thanks to Dundurn Publishing Group and the author via Netgalley for my copy to read and review
10 reviews
February 14, 2023
Another inspiring novel written by Jennifer Dance. A beautiful, heartbreaking story of the life of a horse named Paint and a young First Nations boy Noisy Horse.
I think I would have rated this higher because the storyline is great, her writing as usual is incredibly vivid, however I’m not very intrigued by horses.
Profile Image for Thistle.
1,106 reviews20 followers
January 9, 2017
I had thought Paint would be a "talking animal" story -- a tale told from the animal's point of view. While there were short sections and chapters that were, most of the story was told by and about the humans. And know what? That was perfectly fine. This was one great book!

While the horse named Paint was the thing that tied the story together, the book was more a look at life in the late 1800s in Canada. Paint's mother, a wild mustang, died while giving birth, and the foal was found and raised by a Native American boy. The reader got to experience and learn about life in the Lakota tribe during the period of early contact with Europeans. Then an attack by the army set Paint free, until she was caught by her next owner.

A man who sold buffalo hunting trips (like modern day safaris) used her for a time, and we the readers got to learn about that practice -- who went on such trips, what the results were, etc. When that man retired (buffalo becoming harder and harder to find, and he was quite rich by that time), Paint got sold to English pioneers trying to settle in the Canadian wilds.

While this was a young adult book, it was the kind that an adult could not just absolutely enjoy, but love. I learned so much from this book! To be honest, I don't think about Canada all that much (sorry you northern people on my friends list!), I hadn't ever thought about what life would have been like there in the early days. A book that can offer both a great story and teach me things will always have a place in my heart.

While this was a YA book, the ending was unexpected. *spoilers about it cut* I loved the ending so much.

The only thing about the book I didn't like, and sadly my last impression of it, was the epilogue. The final 10% of the book was Paint's original owner, now an elderly man, talking to his granddaughter about how badly the Europeans treated his people. True? Yes, for sure. But it felt so heavy-handed and unlike the rest of the book: Just an information dump and very little story.

I'd highly recommend Paint, just skip the epilogue.
Profile Image for Christine J.
403 reviews6 followers
September 8, 2018
I’ve read a few Jennifer Dance books, and I can see that her goal is to teach lessons, about the environment, and about indigenous history, through the story. At times, however, those lessons are heavy handed, and glaring, and plunked into what is usually a really good story line.

That’s the case in this book too, which starts off about a Lakota boy who finds a horse in the wild. There are lessons about the arrival of the white man and what they did to indigenous people, but then Paint escapes, and for most of the rest of the book he becomes a rancher’s horse, then a homesteader’s horse, and then at the end the story returns to the Lakota boy, now an old man, who supplies another one of those heavy handed lectures about the struggles of indigenous people at the hands of white settlers.

I’m not saying those lessons don’t need to be taught , but this book doesn’t seem to know what it wants to be? Is it a book about how hard it was for pioneers to make their way in the new world, or is it a story about the changes forced on indigenous people? It tries to be both, but feels like many different stories linked by a horse named Paint.

I like aspects of Dance’s writing. I enjoyed the homesteader’s storyline best, as it reminded me a bit of Laura Ingalls Wilder, and Little House on the Prairie, and like when she just tells a story, but the lessons are too obvious, and don’t fit well into the narrative.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Profile Image for Tajalli Barfoot.
105 reviews1 follower
February 15, 2021
I wanted to give this book 4 stars until I got to the end. While the lessons are important, they were too heavy-handed and in-your-face, so that aspect of the writing could have been incorporated differently. Also, the books spends a lot of time investing the reader in the well-being of Paint; however at the end, we have no idea what happened to her. Between that and then the abrupt change back to the human character from the beginning - Noisy Horse - I was thrown off and let down some. Overall, though, I enjoyed the rest of the book A LOT and was glad I read it. It would be great for Young Adults, so but also adults alike - particularly those that are part of a farming community.
Profile Image for Jaim.
174 reviews
October 28, 2020
2.5 stars.

The first two stories felt rushed and incomplete. I did, however, enjoy the second half of book, which provided an interesting glimpse into the lives (and hardships) of early settlers in the Canadian prairies. The novel’s resolution felt very out of place and would have been best explored earlier in the novel (show, don’t tell).
Profile Image for Ellen Hamilton.
Author 1 book22 followers
June 18, 2021
All offerings of honour for killing Indigenous Peoples should be rescinded. There are no "two sides to the coin" when it comes to the tragedy that Indigenous Peoples have suffered in North America. This is my final word.
Profile Image for Angie.
2,849 reviews15 followers
February 20, 2015
Synopsis: "It's the late 1800s. A Lakota boy finds an orphaned mustang foal and brings her back to his family's camp. Naming her Paint for her black-and-white markings, boy and horse soon become inseparable. Together they learn to hunt buffalo, their fear of the massive beasts tempered by a growing trust in each other.

When the U.S. Cavalry attacks the camp, the pair is forced onto separate paths. Paint's fate becomes entwined with that of settlers, who bring irreversible change to the grassland, setting the stage for environmental disaster. Bought and sold several times, Paint finally finds a home with English pioneers on the Canadian Prairie.

With a great dust storm looming on the horizon, man and horse will need to work together if they hope to survive."


My Review: I requested this book on NetGalley to review. I found the time period and view point to be very interesting. At times I found the book a little odd as it follows Paint the horse but then it will branch off with other characters for a little bit. While it started out being a little distracting, it really added to the story in the long run. I really enjoyed the detail and research that went into this book, it contains a lot of history and when put into a horse's lifetime period compared to a human's you really get an idea of how much everyone (people and animals) went through and struggled with in such a short amount of time. When we return to Noisy Horse at the conclusion, I find myself a little conflicted, while it is accurate I find some of the statements made to be very hateful, but again they are accurate for the time period. In all it was a very well written book and a great way to introduce this history to young readers. The end also included a historical timeline, glossary and several facts that were touched on in the story.
52 reviews3 followers
October 29, 2016
Minor spoilers.

There was a lot I initially liked about Paint. Ever since reading Black Beauty as a child, I have been a sucker for life stories about animals and Paint seemed to be solidly in this genre with a healthy dose of historical content as well. I expected to enjoy it, and for the first two thirds, I mostly did.

But ultimately I felt very let down. I understand that the situations and setting of this book was a difficult time in history. The Lakota were being slaughtered and forcibly removed by the American government, the buffalo were being ritually eradicated, and pioneer life in the Great Plains was ultimately disastrous. Dance writes about all these events well, But if I just wanted to read about how horrible things were, I would pick up a history book. In a novel, particularly one that I want to be able to recommend to young adults, I need to have more context, more connection to the characters and some resolution. Or at the very least, some kind of acknowledgement of how the characters survived or didn't survive their ordeals. The bottom line is that every single character is the book has something terrible happen to them, and once it happens, we just move on to another story. By the end, I was angry. Not because of the horrible things, but because once the horrible thing happened, we just moved on. At the very end, the author attempts to provide some overall resolution or message, but it was too little, too late.

So, if you don't mind bad things happening with no inner meaning or theme or contest, by all means read Paint.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
505 reviews11 followers
January 11, 2015
This review is based on a copy that I received from a Goodreads giveaway.

Paint, by Jennifer Dance, is a historical novel targeted for middle grade readers. It is the story of a horse named Paint, who lived in the late 1800s. The book follows the horse's life story as she moves from owner to owner and experiences the changes that the northwest was experiencing at that time.

I loved this book. Although the back cover states that the target age group is 9-12, I strongly feel that teens and adults will have a strong appreciation for the book. Ms. Dance is a very gifted storyteller. Her words flow perfectly from page to page and I didn't want to put this book down. The period in history is depicted with a great level of detail, and I felt transported back in time. The varied characters are all believable and I cared about all of them. But, mostly I grew to love Paint, the remarkable horse who is the center of this book. Ms. Dance writes with great respect for this horse, and the end result is a very touching novel.

Some younger readers may have a difficult time reading though the final chapter, which they may find a bit "preachy", but it should provide some food for thought about an important part of North American history.

Ms. Dance had written one other novel prior to writing Paint, and I will definitely be adding it to my "to read" list.

I highly recommend the book!
217 reviews3 followers
January 19, 2015
Paint by Jennifer Dance is a touching story of a horse that lived in the 1800's. Paint was orphaned and found by a Lakota boy and their connection is deep. They are separated when the U.S. Cavalry raids the Lakota camp and Paint begin her journey with various owners, including settlers of the Canadian plains. Ultimately this book is about the destruction of the Aboringinal People's in Canada. From the start I loved Paint; a gentle, social and smart horse. Ms Dance descriptions of Paint and Noise Horse, her first owner was lyrical and the horrors of their brutal separation vividly described. The descriptions of the land, the harshness of the settler life were engrossing and real. An excellent, descriptive and gratifying read. I read this book in one sitting and thought about Paint for days after. Thank you Netgalley for giving me this opportunity to review this book for an honest review
Profile Image for Janice Forman.
801 reviews3 followers
December 31, 2015
I loved Jennifer Dance's earlier novel, Red Wolf, and was a little disappointed that "Paint" did not capture my heart quite as much. However, Dance has definitely exposed the reader to life on the plains of North America from 1870 to 1895 in particular. As we follow the life of a wild Mustang, the reader embarks on an interesting journey learning some of the history of the Lakota Indians, the white settlers, the Saskatchewan farmers, and the hardships they all experienced.

Dance has created another novel that can capture the interest of her audience, young adults, and at the same time, help them to understand our history and expose them to some of the injustices imposed on the native population.

I liked the time line at the end of the novel where Dance has highlighted significant historical events and also the interweaving of the fictional events/characters in her novel.

Profile Image for Angela.
172 reviews2 followers
January 2, 2017
While the story was interesting and contained historical events, I found it to be depressing to read. It wasn't so much the people's struggles to survive but rather the lack of hope that you are left with. I found the way the author ended the story to only add to that feeling. One the one hand you are left not knowing the final fate of Paint and on the other you have a grandfather passing a definitely adult burden of hate and bitterness on to a five year old. While there is no denying that the frontier history is made up of atrocities that shouldn't be forgotten, it would have been nice to end on more of a hopeful note for the future or at the least an older child who is being told about these things.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Profile Image for Niki.
1,366 reviews12 followers
December 14, 2015
Paint is a beautiful, strong-willed horse that begins her life by being rescued by a young Lakota boy. Throughout her life she belongs to a few different people and ways of life, giving the reader glimpses to life in the late 1800s, when people were struggling with the land and with each other.
The message is more subtle in Paint than it was in Dance's previous novel, Red Wolf. The full extent of the historical message and injustices aren't made completely clear to the reader until the epilogue and follow up information included after the story's completion. However, despite the subtly, the novel has a message - one that should be heard.
Profile Image for Jess.
244 reviews3 followers
January 24, 2017
I was a little bit worried about picking this book up. I really enjoyed it, however I wish that the point of views weren't so all over the place. I felt that yes it followed Paint on her life journey, but if you were to have switching points of view I would have liked to see what had happened to Noisy Horse after the attack, not just get a blurb from his older point of view at the end of the book. I was just as interested in his journey and it wasn't touched upon. Paint's voice got overshadowed by the other owners, and I felt it took away from the feel of the book. But overall I did really enjoy it. Looking into Hawk now by the same author. We'll see how it goes.
Profile Image for Katarina.
878 reviews22 followers
April 5, 2015
An important book, that should be read by everybody.

Jennifer Dance wrote a book that manages to portray our history with a horse as the main character. The concept is amazing, and the execution of that concept is masterful. As a story about a horse, this is a great book, but there is so much more, and the book goes so much deeper, that it becomes a history lesson and a commentary on what we did (do) to the land and the people on it.

Pure geniu
Profile Image for Colette.
276 reviews2 followers
June 13, 2016
Paint, a wild mustang, is born in the 1870's and is witness to some of the major events of her time. She becomes a buffalo hunter, cattle rancher, homesteader and mother. Told by the people who have owned her, Paint struggles against her fear of wolves and the strangeness of people. Children who love nature and horses will appreciate the descriptions of animal behavior. Recommended as a resource for teaching about life on the prairies.
3 reviews
March 11, 2016
Dance's writing flows easily. The story is believable and engaging. History comes alive, seen through the adventures of the horse Paint. I read it straight through without putting it down and wanted more at the end. It is a good read for adults as well as youths, especially those with a love of horses.
Profile Image for Haylee.
9 reviews
July 20, 2022
I really loved the horse’s point of view!
Profile Image for Maureen.
120 reviews1 follower
April 1, 2017
While this is a decent story, I feel Jennifer Dance has written better novels. The book followed Paint, the horse, as she lived her life, with the perspectives of Paint's owners along with hers. I feel the book would be far stronger had it been from the horse perspective of the growth in the grasslands, while including the experiences of Noisy Horse throughout the story. The epilogue felt tacked on and I didn't like that Noisy Horse was explaining the horrors he experienced to a five year old.
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