I’m old enough to have read the Saddle Club books when they first came out. The stories of Steve, Carol, and Lisa seemed like the kind of fun adventures I’d love to have at a barn with friends…if I had a barn and friends. But I lived vicariously through them, and though I outgrew the books (I suspect I was a bit old for them since I was in junior high and reading Tolkien by the time they came out), I have a fond place in my heart for Pine Hollow Stables, but never Veronica, the snooty rich girl who had the fanciest horses and treated them badly. I also read the Throughbred series, but not as much I think for some reason.
By the time I grew out of the Saddle Club I’d moved into reading other genres — namely romance and fantasy. But my love for the horse stories with the plucky young heroine(s) remained. A few years ago I discovered Canterwood Crest and while this series takes place at an elite riding academy, one with a dedicated show circuit on the east coast, something had changed. Where Stevie, Lisa, and Carol had to scrape up money for riding lessons, and were the kind of hard-working kids I’d been when I had worked twelve-hour days Monday through Friday in exchange for an hour riding lesson once a week (It was horses. I didn’t realize it was labor exploitation. This was the 80s!), the kids that went to Canterwood Crest were if not outright rich, then at least well off. And the villains of the story still were the richer kids, but let’s face it, no one who attended Canterwood Crest was poor. Certainly none of them experienced the type of poverty I grew up with.
And as an older adult, all I could think of was how damn entitled those kids acted and frankly, yes, just how rich they were. I think toward the end of the first arc the main character started to understand what her parents did to keep her in the academy, but let’s be honest. New York City shopping sprees and that brand of lip gloss they kept pushing, those are not cheap and not available to everybody.
I get it that books are an escape, and our lives are hard right now. We need all the fluff we can get. But I also think as authors we have a responsibility. Which is why, as I started to create my own academy stories that I’m working on, I knew I wanted scholarship students, those who couldn’t afford the hefty tuition but were invited to the academy with all tuition and expenses paid. I wanted the students to be even, and so for the Pegasus Academy no one came with their own horse. They would be bonding with a magical equine, and many of the students didn’t have their own horse to begin with. And finally, it would be made clear that because this is a Musimagium academy, that all who were invited were welcome because their magic will be needed in some capacity.
I feel like it’s time for the equestrian academy books to move beyond “rich girls” and fashion. I know there are readers out there, both young adult and adult, who want to know more than who is wearing what or who has a crush on whom. There are many different ways to enjoy horses; not all of them cost thousands of dollars. Let’s reflect the diversity in our equestrian world, not just the rich girls.
