Jill's Gymkhana

Jill's Ponies #1

by Ruby Ferguson

Jill unexpectedly finds herself the proud owner of Farmer Clay's piebald pony. But that's when her problems begin because ponies are expensive. Where will she find the money?

Genres: Horses, Childrens, Fiction, Animals, Juvenile, Young Adult

185 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1949

About the author

Ruby Constance Annie Ashby Ferguson
aka
Ruby Ferguson and R.C. Ashby

Reviews

[Hilary · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first in the 'Jill' series, reissued in 2009 by Fidra Books with the full, original text, unmodernised and un-Bowdlerised, and the Caney illustrations. This tells the story of how Jill Crewe and her mother move to Chatton in straitened circumstances despite which they are able to buy a cottage with a paddock attached how Jill falls in love with a black pony in a nearby farmer's field, and how, through a series of chance encounters and lucky coincidences, she is able to buy him, keep him, learn to ride him and, by the end of the book, become the star of the Chatton Show. Along the way we meet the cast of characters that will become familiar throughout the later books: Jill's best friend Ann, her dreadful cousin Cecilia, her riding mentor, the wheelchair-bound Martin Lowe (it's interesting how matter-of-factly and sympathetically the author deals with Martin; somehow it seems a far more modern attitude than it probably really is). Written in 1949, the book shows its age in the usual way of vintage children's books: the sheer amount of freedom that the children are routinely allowed and, contrastingly, how terrifyingly strict Jill's mother is in some respects. Notably, in spite of their poverty and her insistence that Jill must pay for Black Boy's upkeep herself, she refuses to allow Jill to take money for walking some smaller children to school, and is all set to refuse a gift from Martin who is pretty strict himself because it's too generous. As recently as 1949, the Crewes' cottage has no electricity and gas only downstairs (it does at least have a bathroom though), and Jill receives exactly one Christmas present from her mother a fountain pen. What would they have made of today's children with their sacks full of MP3 players and Wiis? It's also a terrifying reminder of how badly the currency has become devalued: Jill's mother receives fifty guineas for the serial rights of one of her books, out of which Jill is able to buy Black Boy for

[Dark-Draco · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had forgotton how good these are. This may be an old book, but it is funny and enjoyable, even if I am a little bit older than its target audience!

Jill Crewe has always wanted a pony and when she meets Farmer Clay, who just happens to have one for sale, she can't wait. But Jill hasn't a clue about how to care or ride for Black Boy. She meets Martin, an ex RAF pilot who is now in a wheel chair, who offers to teach her what to do. Soon she is soaring, literally, and gets to take part in her first gymkhana, with the chance to win a coveted rosette.

This has all the great ingrediants for a children's story and yet doesn't feel like a cliche. It made me want to go out and compete my ponies straight away! Yes, it is dated - I would love to buy a horse for £25 - but that only adds to the charm. I am so glad that I got to revist Jill's world.

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably my favorite series of all time. Loved the sarcastic, pony-mad heroine who has to really work hard and use her wits to get what she wants.

[Emma Rose · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reread in 2023 - I had no recollection of this book whatsoever and I can’t believe how harsh my original review was ten years ago!! I LOVED this!! This is packed with wonderful things - all sorts of friendships, Jill learning about horses, doing odd jobs, organising a yard sale, all sorts of pony-mad children well-off and otherwise, discussion of pony books, school, even camp! I loved this, I’m so happy this is the first in a series!


Original review in 2013 - This is a very good entry into pony fiction, if not completely original. I did like that Jill really struggles to get her own pony and everything that's needed to keep him happy. Her family isn't well-off and the lengths she has to go to in order to have some nice jodphurs, boots, feed for her horse or a stable, is something else and a nice change from most pony books where a lot of the cost of keeping a horse is barely touched upon. The writing could be improved but this is a good story.

[Dominika]

I've been picking the best sick bed reading material this week. Delightful. I started reading this with about zero desire to ride a horse but now I want to go to Camp Pegasus and have a jolly old horsy time 🤣

[Jan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Written in 1949, read by me around 1972 and rediscovered thanks to Lucy Mangan’s wonderful Bookworm. I’m sure I enjoyed it as an adult every bit as much as when I was In junior school. So entertaining and well written, Jill’s lively personality will ‘buck you up no end’ .

[Gina House · Rating 5 out of 5]

Joy, joy, joy!!! If you ever told me that I would give 5 full and brilliant stars to a middle grade book about horses and gymkhanas, I wouldn't have believed you.

But, because this is a Ruby Ferguson (an author I've only recently discovered and love so much) book, it was bound to be awesome. I also gave 5🌟 to Apricot Sky and Lady Rose and Mrs. Memmary. Oh, how I wish more of her books were republished for readers to enjoy!

Jill is just the sweetest, most amusing preteen that I've ever encountered. I love that the narrative is in first person and that young Jill talks directly to you like you're her best friend. My favorite thing!

Everything about this vintage book is cozy: the black and white illustrations (though in my hardcover copy, someone used crayons to color them in, but in a pleasing way!), Jill's personality (so like me when I was young), and the domestic and every day descriptions of food, clothing and home.

I had to force myself to read this book slowly so that I wouldn't finish it all in just a day or two. I never wanted it to end! I can't wait to read more in the Jill's Ponies series. And, to be clear, I have had very little interest in ponies or horses my whole life (though I love them as beautiful and sensitive creatures) and I've never ridden a horse/pony or had riding lessons.

BUT, that only made me enjoy this vintage middle grade book even more. I learned so much! Black Boy stole my heart and so did Jill Crewe. Seriously, this story is in the top 5 of my favorite books I've read so far this year (out of 78!)

If you haven't read a Jill book, now's the time! (Then, comment and let me know how you liked it!)

[Kay Cugini · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was written in 1949, ive just re read it and it bought so many childhood memories back, remember reading this sitting on hay bales in stables as a child, the Knight book pictured is the one I have and had as a child, I love the Bonar Dunlop illustrations. Jill has always been one of my favourite fictional characters, I loved her fire and courage as a child and still do, the books are witty and I like the way she and Ann always try to do the right thing but also are very cutting with bullies and fools! Lighting her candle on Christmas morning as they had no electricity upstairs, the peppering of 'wi zard!''Rather!' And 'I should jolly well think so' makes me smile, I think these books stand the test of time yet also reflect the post war era they were written in beautifully xx

[Annie · Rating 4 out of 5]

For our most recent podcast episode, I made Dave read Jill's Gymkhana by Ruby Ferguson, a book from 1949 about a young girl named Jill who comes by a pony, learns to ride and dreams of entering a gymkhana. I was given the whole set of books by my mum when I was quite small, as I was pony mad, just like her at that age, and I loved them all. It was really fun to revisit them now, and I still really enjoyed reading this first one. It wasn't nearly as problematic as I'd expected (though there were a couple of iffy moments in terms of discriminatory language) and it made me laugh more than I thought it would. It's very much a wish fulfilment book - Jill does work very hard to look after her pony, keep her stable in order and learn good horsemanship, but she gains an awful lot of stuff almost entirely at random. Her first person narrative has a very self-deprecating style, which is endearing and funny, and I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the series again in short order.

[Betawolf · Rating 2 out of 5]

Okay, so everyone knows that an important part of being a normal teenage (tweenage?) girl is loving horses (or ponies). So far as I know, there is no comprehensive explanation of why this particular hobby so dominates the hearts and minds of the fairer sex, but then again when I was a kid I was completely obsessed with dinosaur trivia, and at least you can actually ride a pony. (My efforts to dig up dinosaur skeletons in the back of the playground did not bear much fruit, sadly, and anyway skeletons lack the viscera for visceral thrills.)

So anyway, reading a pony book has to be part of my research. We've established that. Ferguson's series is (I am told) a solid central example of the genre, so I won't be going far wrong. It even sells itself by talking about how Jill is a total beginner who makes loads of mistakes with her pony, so I should be able to pick it all up as I go, right?

"Now before we go any further I had better say that if you are blasé about ponies you had better put this book down"

Yeah, no. Jill might not have ever actually handled a pony before, but of course she knows absolutely everything about them, and assumes that the reader must be the same, and is totally familiar with all sorts of titles like 'M.F.H' and 'hard woman from hounds' which ordinary pedestrians like me wouldn't have the foggiest about. The book is actually quite clever about this when it comes to pony handling, as it follows all of Jill's 'and as of course you know' statements with very precise descriptions of how to brush or mount your pony, so that, well, of course the young know-it-all reading this book will know this information when it becomes vital to their future relationships with ponies. As a know-it-all myself, I appeciate the effort.

Anyway, there is also plot to this book. The plot is that Jill wants a pony, because Jill is an 11-year-old girl, and Jill gets a pony, because Jill is an incredibly lucky 11-year-old girl. The blurb on the back of the book would have you believe that the story is about how Jill has to work really hard to afford her pony. That blurb is a complete lie. Jill gets a pony because she sees a pony in a field near her house and nobody wants that pony so the farmer offers to sell it to her for some ridiculously low price (£25, old money) which is nonetheless well outside of anything Jill could ask for from her mother. Mother, however, just so happens to get a massive windfall around then and gives her daughter £30 with which, yes, she buys a pony and gets a load of pony gear for free. And they keep it in their back garden which it later turns out includes not only an orchard, but a hay field (!) and a stable (!). Because anyone could just miss a freakin' stable out back. Needless to say, I do not buy the 'we don't have much' narrative this story tries to present.

Jill learns to ride because she runs into a wheelchaired guy at a gymkhana who just straight offers to teach her, and I am about 90% confident that he was putting the moves on her mother, who starts getting really bent out of shape about obligations to the guy, which of course Jill just ignores. Jill moans about not having fancy riding gear, and eventually just buys some using some of her mom's money. There is a sort of training montage about Jill learning to ride her pony, and at the end there is a weird timeskip which seems to point to the book being partially based on life experience, as all sorts of previously unmentioned characters show up in the final gymkhana where Jill wins a bunch of ribbons (but not, we note, in her first gymkhana, which would be the obvious if implausible narrative solution).

I didn't actually enjoy the book. The writing took a 'voice' for Jill which was a bit too cloying and twee, and had weird interjected parenthetical excuses that only drew attention to passages where Jill exhibited a wider vocabulary than you (or, rather, Ferguson) might expect of a 14-year-old girl. I'm also not actually very interested in ponies, so the, uh, charm of the book is a bit wasted. The morals of all the short vignettes in the book were all about how being polite and nice is better behaviour than being sensible. Nonetheless, I have to give the book its due. It pushes a pony-based value system of mucking out and putting lots of effort into something you love, and while I can't really 'get' it, I can sort of appreciate that from afar.

PS: It hardly seems worth saying, but there are ponies out of the wazoo in this book. Every girl in Jill's class seems to have a pony and they are all competitive riders who show up to all the events. You can certainly forgive the impressionable child reading this book for thinking that ponies must actually be quite cheap and if her parents don't get her one it's probably just because they're evil.

[Kelsey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Does starting the year with a 72 year old English book for older children and young teens seem weird? Or does it perfectly match what I need for escapism right now? I find myself not wanting to watch or read anything American and/or overly relevant right now, is all I can say.

Anyway my mum had many of these books when she was a kid, and I read them over and over in my teens. This is the only one she didn't have or I couldn't find in bookshops at the time; I randomly decided to check eBay and there it was. 5 stars for personal nostalgia and for taking me to another place and time, not because I want to be there or think it was a better time, it's just not now.

eta with pointless nitpicks about minor details, not about the book itself: my book says first published 1949 so not sure why Goodreads has it as a 1955 first publish date.
Also I recommend always finding an unchanged version; yes there is some language that isn't acceptable in 2021, and the money is weird, but a) if you update the money it's still always locked in time to when that updated version was published; the 1990s sanitised versions that tried to change the money values are now wrong too, for example and b) reading racist language from the 40s didn't make me racist as a kid/teen in the 1990s because I wasn't dumb and knew it was from another time? Give kids some credit! Don't try and sanitise the past! Oh, the book isn't disgustingly racist, definitely not by the standards of the time - it's that casual kind of racism you come across in books written pre-civil rights where they casually refer to working hard as "working like a Black". For the most part, things like race, sex etc just don't exist in this world. It's wall to wall ponies, eating sausages and hot buttered toast, swotting for exams and going on treks across the moors, etc

[Blake · Rating 4 out of 5]

(FYI I tend to only review one book per series, unless I want to change my scoring by 0.50 or more of a star. -- I tend not to read reviews until after I read a book, so I go in with an open mind.)

I decided to make a 'childhood favourites' shelf for those books I grew up enjoying.


First time read the author's work?: Yes

Will you be reading more?: Yes

Would you recommend?: Yes


------------
How I rate Stars: 5* = I loved (must read all I can find by the author)
4* = I really enjoyed (got to read all the series and try other books by the author).
3* = I enjoyed (I will continue to read the series)
or
3* = Good book just not my thing (I realised I don't like the genre or picked up a kids book to review in error.)

All of the above scores means I would recommend them!
-
2* = it was okay (I might give the next book in the series a try, to see if that was better IMHO.)
1* = Disliked

Note: adding these basic 'reviews' after finding out that some people see the stars differently than I do - hoping this clarifies how I feel about the book. :-)

[Jill Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m only giving this book 3 stars because it’s very British and I bought four books in this series for my granddaughter. I think she’ll find the language difficult to fathom and the pounds, shillings and pence unimaginable.

I will give it to her though because the little girl called Jill is telling the story from her point of view. The tale of her getting a pony and learning to ride it is endearing. I bought these books because of their titles; Jill’s Gymkhana, A Stable for Jill, Jill’s Riding Club and Jill enjoys her ponies. I think she’ll like books with Jill in the title and know they are from her grandmother Jill.

My granddaughters have horses and often read horse books. Many of these books have the same kind start.

[Prudence and the Crow · Rating 3 out of 5]

Such a fascinating revisit of my childhood favourite - I still love her, and my memories of spending time with Jill are literally the way most people think of their childhood friends, I can't emphasise enough that Jill WAS my childhood friend - but she can be so truly awful. And yet I know I knew that a bit at the time, and that I saw myself as pretty awful too, so we were good company for each other. Only I never had a pony. I'm still frustrated that this book randomly skips a year, because I could've taken a lot lot more of Jill learning the basics, but of course, there are plenty more books about that...

[Kristin Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

I missed a number of the pony books growing up horse-crazy, and I'm slowly making up for it. This was delightful. While the language is dated, this is so well-written that it's more endearing than distracting. The protagonist is enjoyable, and like all good pony books, she faces interesting horse-y challenges along the way. Have hunted down and ordered the next three on the series on Amazon.

[Christine Meunier · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the first of the Jill books, young Jill is an only child living with her sole parent, her mother. Money is tight and although Jill dreams of having and riding a pony of her own, she feels it is just that – a dream. And the idea of taking part in a gymkhana is her ultimate dream – Jill’s gymkhana.

Read more at http://equus-blog.com/jills-gymkhana-...

[Yvonne · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book when I was an awkward Texan Anglophile horse lover, aged 8. I read it many times, then grew out of my horse phase and lost the book and forgot the title. With the help of Ali Smith’s Autumn and Brian Spence of the Abbey Bookshop in Paris, I found it again. I still love it, and am happy to see something that made 8-year-old Yvonne forget her troubles and get lost in a book.

[Lainey Grieve Ramsay · Rating 5 out of 5]

These books ruled my horse obsessed childhood. I loved them and I loved Jill Crewe, she was living my dream life. Jill’s Gymkhana, was originally published in 1949 by Hodder and Stoughton, illustrated by Caney. I read them in the 60’s and 70’s and still have them now.

Set in bygone days, the likes of which we will never see again. Jill Crewe lives in a cottage with her mother, money is scarce but they get by. Jill manages to buy her first pony for £25 from the local farmer, (it’s fortunate that there’s a paddock attached to the cottage) and through a series of events she wins her first gymkhana.

[Pauline · Rating 5 out of 5]

An old, old, old favourite. I was in love with the Jill books as a child. So glad to hear they're still being published.

[Catie]

Recommended by Arpita (@bagfullofbooks) - 6/4/2019

[Karen Stevens · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the all-time favourite classics of pony book lovers. Can be read and re-read many times and still enjoyable!

[Jess · Rating 5 out of 5]

Written in such a great way! I really enjoyed reading this

[Jemma Spark · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Jill books are the best selling pony books of all time and really you should read this one first. Jill is so funny and doesn't take herself seriously!

[Horror_Reader1973 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Horse mad me loved this book!!

[Mary Pagones · Rating 5 out of 5]

An iconic British pony book that’s still a first-time pleasure to read as an adult, because of the wise, witty narrative voice.

[Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this series as a kid, and found it on ebook. Fun to reread.

[Renata Shura · Rating 5 out of 5]

Why had it taken me this long to discover Jill? Absolutely adore her and her pony Black Boy and I can’t wait to read more about their adventures!

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

nostalgia

I love this, I love those books and I was little and I love you don’t know I’ve got but all of them this weekend and I’m going to read them all as well

[Lucy Branch · Rating 5 out of 5]

incredible

I loved this book I normally hate reading but this book I’ve just been dyeing to read it all day long I loved it so much best book I’ve read in a long time

[Debbie Fisher · Rating 5 out of 5]

love the Jill Series!

So happy to be rereading the best pony books from my youth!! Jill was my childhood hero and I enjoy and appreciate her as much today as I did then!