Re-Living My Childhood - part 3

Spoiler Alert! I might give away too much, so if you haven't read Smoky the Cow Horse by Will James and you want to, be warned!

I remember my father getting this book for me from the library. It is memorable because Dad was not much of a fiction reader. However, he had read this book as a boy and brought it home for me to read. I read it several times as a girl, along with everything else Will James wrote. I loved the illustrations, which were by the author, and I loved the casual way he spoke directly to the reader, as if he were telling a story around a campfire.

This time, I listened to Smoky as a book on tape. It was produced in 1981 and wasn't the greatest audio book I have ever listened to. The audio book industry has come a long way in 29 years. I thought the reader was kind of ordinary. I would love to hear this book read by someone that sounded more like a cowboy - like Clint Eastwood. The recording was 5 tapes long and I almost stopped after the 3rd tape because I remembered the last half of the book being sad. My memory was correct and it made me heartsick to listen to the description of Smoky being abused, but I carried on because I also remembered that there was a happy ending.

It was interesting to read reviews of this book. Some people loved the whole book. Some people liked the second half because there was more "story" happening. Some people were offended by the racism. Some people hated the bad grammar and cowboy slang. I was just interested to observe how much our outlook has changed since this book was written (1927) and took it as a glimpse into a slice of the American West that has slipped into history.

If you google Smoky The Cowhorse, you will find an Australian site that has the entire book on line, including the illustrations. Also, there is major spoiler information on the wikipedia site about this book. www.willjames.com will take you to a site that sells Will Jame's artwork. www.willjames.org will take you to the Will James Society. I was interested to learn "Lone Cowboy" by Will James, which was sub-titled "an autobiography" was actually completely fiction up to his mid-teens and a mixture of fact and fiction after that. (The things you learn from the internet!)