Pony Pals

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As a kid I spent a lot of time on my neighbor's farm. I loved the big animals and wished I could ride the horses. But they were mostly for farm work and the farmers were much too busy farming to teach me how to ride. One girl I knew had her own horse. I got to sit on that horse a couple of times. I never really rode her. I would visit that horse and dream of having one myself, or at least riding one. I did get to take riding lessons one summer at camp and loved it. I only rode a couple of times after that.

I remembered that longing to have a horse when my editor at Scholastic asked me if I would like to write a series of six books about girls and their ponies.  I immediately said, "Yes!" Three girls on three ponies, I thought, can have loads of adventures. I also liked the idea of writing six books about the same characters. My editor and I never dreamed that ten years later there would be forty-four books about the Pony Pals. If I had known I might not have decided to put the word "pony" in every title. It wasn't so hard to do for the first six books, but using "pony" in the next thirty-eight titles was a challenge.

I remember the day I made up the main characters for the series. I was walking on a country road in New England. First, I decided that the Pony Pals would be strong, smart, independent, kind, and fun-loving. Then I gave them their names - Pam, Anna, and Lulu. I wanted the first letters of their first names to spell PAL and they do. I also decided that the Pony Pals should live in a small town like the one I grew up in. It would be a place that had a lot of good riding trails. Another idea I had that day was that the girls should be able to ride to one another's houses.

When I came home from my walk I drew a map of Wiggins and decided where each girl and pony would live. Next I turned on my computer and started to write down my ideas about how the girls would be different from one another. I definitely wanted one of them to be dyslexic and instead of writing things down, she would draw her ideas for solving problems. People with dyslexia have trouble with spelling, so I gave Anna a name that is spelled the same way backward as forward.

My friends say that I am a little bit like all of the Pony Pals. I am very organized, like Pam. I love nature, like Lulu. I think I am most like Anna. I am dyslexic and a good artist, just like her.

A very important decision I made in those first days of working on the Pony Pals was that the ponies should be as important as the girls in the stories. It was fun to decide each pony's breed and what they would be like. Lightning, Acorn, and Snow White needed to have their own characters - just like the girls.

Over the years I have spent a lot of time doing research for the Pony Pals. I met great kids and wonderful ponies at homes, farms, and riding schools. Some of my ideas for Pony Pal adventures came from some of these visits. I was also inspired by reading about ponies and horses and learning how to ride myself. A lot of ideas came from my own life. For example my dog, Willie, was lost and I went to search for him in the woods. I used that experience in Pony Pals #27, THE PONY AND THE MISSING DOG. I've never seen the birth of a foal, but I did watch a calf being born. That experience helped me write Pony Pals #38, THE NEWBORN PONY. I know what it is like to have a pet that you love die. The loss of my own pets helped me write #8: GOODBYE PONY.

For each Pony Pal story I had to make a lot of decisions. What will the Pony Problem be? How will the Pony Pals solve it? First, I'd write the story in an outline. When I was happy with the outline, I'd write the book chapter by chapter. I edited each chapter a few times before I went on to the next chapter. The Pony Pal books would not be very good if I didn't do a lot of re-writing.

There are thirty-eight Pony Pal books and six Super Specials. It all started with #1, I WANT A PONY. The last title in the series is Super Special #6, THE LAST PONY RIDE.

I hope you enjoy reading the adventures of Pam, Anna, Lulu, Lightning, Acorn, and Snow White. I also hope you will have plenty of adventures of your own - with or without a pony. A lot of Pony Pal readers like to imagine that they are the Pony Pals and make up their own adventures. Some pretend that their bicycles are ponies. You don't have to have a pony to be a Pony Pal.

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