Book #63 of 2024: The Winter Pony

[thistlechaser]

The Winter Pony by Iain Lawrence.

Quick synopsis: The (nightmarish) story Captain Robert Scott's attempt to be the first man to reach the South Pole, told from the first person point of view of one of the ponies that Scott shipped in from Russia.

Brief opinion: This is a children's book that parents should be very careful about letting a child read. One reviewer (Manybooks on Goodreads) described this book as "at best horrifyingly frustrating and anger-inducing reading experience". This story was deeply sad and too easily made me hate what humans can do to animals.

Plot: Somewhere in a Russian forest, a wild pony is born. He doesn't get much of a life though before some Russian men capture him, break him, and put him to work. His first owners beat him on a daily basis and abused him. Even though he was just a couple years old, soon enough he was too old and broken to work more, so they took him into a town to sell at a horse market.

The pony was put with the worst of the worst horses: Ones so broken and abused that no one would want them. A buyer for Captain Robert Scott had no idea how to judge horses, so he ended up buying all of the ponies from this group.

Then the poor ponies (and packs of dogs) were shipped from Russia down towards the South Pole. Months on the ship, months of being tied up without being able to move, not enough food, the dogs (predators) being too close to them.

From the moment they landed, the ponies were abused. Not enough (usually no) shelter from the blizzards, what seemed like no where near enough food and really low quality food, etc.

In Scott's quest to be the first man to the South Pole, the ponies were literally worked to death. When they could no longer pull the sledges, they were shot and fed to the dogs. This happened within view of the living ponies. (To be fair on this point, this was in 1910 or so, so people didn't think about considering what animals were seeing or feeling.)

Food for the ponies ran out (though they had brought enough food for the men and dogs), but they beat the ponies to keep them working.

Eventually they got to a point where ponies could no longer travel (a glacier had to be climbed), so one by one they shot all of them.

Writing/editing: The technical aspect of writing and editing were both good. I spotted no editing issues. This book is marketed as a children's book, but it's so dark and depressing that all parents should read it first to see if it's too much for their kids. It was too much for adult-me.

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: This book made me so angry. Not only were the ponies so abused, but James Pigg (the oddly named main character pony) was so forgiving of it all. He loved his handler and would do anything for him, overlooking all abuses. That made it so much worse.

I struggled with how much James Pigg knew -- he had basically a human-level knowledge of things. For example, not only did he know what a dress is, but he knew which one was a pretty one. Also, though he was only ever in a town once, he knew what politicians were and what it meant to be compared to one. That being said, it worked in the story. I struggled more with if I should have been annoyed with how much a pony knew rather than being annoyed with how much he knew.

There was a really weird religious aspect to this book. When he was in his first year of life, James Pigg saw a vision of "the pony place" -- pony-heaven. For the rest of his life, he worked towards getting there. Things like he had to work hard and not slack so he could go to pony-heaven.

The author considered Captain Scott a personal hero. I have a hard time reconciling that someone could write a book like this, a book that so clearly lays out how abusive the man was towards animals, and considering that man a hero.

Instead of making me feel the same about Captain Scott, it made me angry at how much animals suffered so one man could reach such a pointless goal. First man to the South Pole. Yay? Edit: It's really hard not to see things through modern eyes. For the time, Scott was very good to his animals, and that might have been what cost him his life in the end.

Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: I don't have the first clue how to rate this book. It was well-written and fast reading, but it made me so angry and sad (I was sobbing at the end). It was full of what seemed like such casual cruelty. All these animals hurt, suffering, and killed for one man's ego. It feels like a cop-out, but I'll give it ⭐️⭐️⭐️ - 3 stars/okay. Maybe it deserves five stars, maybe it deserves one. Compromising at three. If I force myself to ignore what would now be considered animal cruelty, based on story alone, I'll give it ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ½. It really should probably get five stars, but I don't know how I can rate something that high when it made me feel so bad.