This is what happens when you are very tired but have to stay up for something (which never ends up happening)- you read an awful book that your kid culled off their shelf (having never read it either). It’s a book based on a movie that was based on a book. That should tell you something! The dismal thing is that I loved the original book, My Friend Flicka, what it is to see it reduced like this. No depth, subtle nuance, descriptive language . . . However I suppose it does get the basics of the story in front of younger readers. I noticed years ago that there was this new film made of the novel, with a girl as the main character, and the horse a black wild mustang, not a golden range filly. I knew a lot more of the story was changed, so I had no interest in watching the film. I’m sure this little movie-to-book angle has left a lot out, and it rackets through the narrative pretty darn quick, but it was enough to let me know I was right.
What’s the same: it takes place on a Wyoming ranch, the main character is struggling in school and has a hard time pleasing her disciplinarian father. She sets her heart on catching and taming the young horse, which everyone else sees it as a dangerous undertaking. There’s a mountain lion encounter (way more dramatic and close-at-hand than I recall in the original, though I admit I don’t remember it so clearly) and a storm, and an illness, and that dramatic scene where she hears a gunshot from her sickbed and misinterprets the meaning . . .
Changes I noticed (beyond the main ones mentioned above): the original character (Ken) had admired a picture on the landing of a duck, not wild horses running (small detail, but it was significant in the first story). I don’t recall there being a wild horse race at a rodeo (maybe there was, but it sure didn’t include Flicka). I think this story blended some things about Flicka with another horse from the ranch in the original novel, the very fast black mare that someone bought hoping to turn her into a racehorse, that brained herself on the sign. The taming of Flicka happened over injury and lying in cold creek water, not being coaxed with apples in the dark of a corral.
There’s more I’m sure, but I’ve forgotten too much by now. However, it was enough unfamiliarity mixed with a beloved narrative, that I felt perplexed, irritated and bored throughout the slim fifty-odd pages. I’m probably being too harsh. Someone who’s never read the original, will probably find this a heartwarming story with a good message- including the bits about the main character rewriting her essay to keep her foothold in the private school (true to the original).
Edit add: this book was in my personal library catalog for the shortest time on record. I added it one day when my kid put in her cull pile, read it the very next day and promptly took it off again.
