Hoofprints: Horse Poems

By Jessie Haas

Book Overview

Saddle up, ride back with me. You take the Thoroughbred you have lessons on; I'll ride my fat Morgan. Jessie Haas's invitation is an opportunity for adventure -- a ride back in time through 65 million... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060534060
• ISBN13: 9780060534066
• Release Date: March 2004
• Publisher: Greenwillow
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.8" x 6.0"
• Age Range: 10 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 5 and higher

Customer Reviews

A Wonderful Ride

Adapted from a review that appeared in the Brattleboro Reformer:"Saddle up," says the poet, "ride back with me," and in a few short lines we travel back "past buckboard wagons, buffalo hunts.../ and every sort of infidel invader," until we reach such an ancient time that horses aren't creatures to ride anymore. Then we walk, 45 million years or so,our brown-spotted companions pattering beside us, on an ever-increasing number of toes.Toes? Yes. It's just one of the fascinating details in Hoofprints: Horse Poems, by Jessie Haas. Beginning around the time of the dinosaurs, it follows the evolution and history of horses and humanity up to the present day. Along the way, it offers readers an intensely personal view of history. In `Riding with the Horde,' for example, we don't just learn about Genghis Kahn, we become part of his army in a "long brown river of horses," caught up in a rhythm of riding and conquest that seems to have no end. There are many sad moments in these poems, but joyful ones too. When we see the ancient riders on the Asian steppe, their gold-trimmed clothing "Catching sun, / Like a million cobwebs on a morning meadow," we understand the freedom and power people sought when they first began to ride. That longing echoes through a later poem, `Big Top,' about a North American boy and a circus horse whose separate notions of freedom intersect then move apart, "widening farther and farther / into the unknown." The beautiful design of this book is worthy of its content, and it would be a wonderful gift for a lover of poetry, horses, or history. It's also perfect for use in the classroom, and it should inspire some interesting social studies projects.Jeanne Walsh is Reference Librarian at Brooks Memorial Library in Brattleboro, Vermont.