“The Rodeo is about to arrive in town and all the cowboys want to impress the cowgirls with their riding skills. Cowboy Marty lives on Seven Star Ranch and rides a bicycle to do his chores. He wants to impress the cowgirls too but there is just one problem: he is secretly scared of horses. To stop anybody finding out, he puts an advert in the local newspaper asking for help. To his surprise, a skilled rider named Marjorie shows up on his ranch and is willing to teach him to ride. However, Marty has some skills of his own. Can he teach her some valuable lessons in return?”
My 4 year old son Ryan and I absolutely love “The Cowboy Who Was Afraid of Horses” by Michelle Path. It’s beautifully written and is very clever in subtly teaching kids about overcoming fears. I found it a great conversation starter, asking Ryan what he thought the cowboy could do to solve his problem, and what he thought might happen next. I could all but see the cogs turning as he tried to problem solve and look ahead as to where the story was heading.
This book is wonderfully illustrated with bright, engaging pictures, and again I am impressed with the attention to detail. The font is in keeping with the Wild West theme, and ties the words of the story to the illustrations. The “cowboy talk” was a huge hit, and Ryan loved that the pictures make use of the entire page with the words written over the landscape: it fills the book with colour and excitement!
The story line itself has a really lovely feel to it, and I love how the cowboy’s motives change as the story progresses. It’s something that resonates with real life and is easily relatable. Having 2 boys, I also felt that the story teaches gentlemanly values in which I strongly approve. Ryan loves the story and I highly recommend “The Cowboy Who Was Scared of Horses” for children of all ages over 3 (due to the paper pages and not being board pages, but my 2 year old enjoys having the story read to him all the same!).
Available through http://michellepath.com.au/shop/the-cowboy-who-was-scared-of-horses/the-cowboy-who-was-scared-of-horses/
RRP: $16.95
