When you need a quick, easy read there’s still nothing better than a children’s book- and on some days I still need that. I think I didn’t realize how much YA fiction is a bit still beyond me, until I finished The Goose Girl. Well, this one caught my eye because of course it features roller-skating. I wasn’t familiar with the character before: Snickerdoodle is a tiny man who rides around in a car made out of a peanut shell. He’s full of optimism and cheer, faces every problem with a can-do attitude and encourages others to do the same. That’s the whole message. That you can accomplish anything if you put your mind to it, in ways that aren’t obvious at first, and no matter what others think of your abilities (in his case, Snickerdoodle is often overlooked because of his small size).
So, this tiny man finds a horse stuck in a mudhole, and helps it get out by tickling the horse (so he laughs and with a sudden leap and kick, is free). Then he finds out the horse ran away from a rodeo because he felt he didn’t fit in there, he didn’t have the temperament of a mean, bucking bronco, but wanted to show off his roller-skating skills and wow the crowd with his performance. Snickerdoodle goes with him back to the rodeo grounds to make his case. The rodeo boss thinks this is a joke at first, but when Snickerdoodle insists, he puts an impossible condition on it: the gray horse can roller-skate for the crowd, if Snickerdoodle can ride the toughest bronco. This didn’t seem fair to me, but the small man was not deterred. He leaped on the mean horse, hung on and started twisting its mane. He braided the bronco’s mane while riding him, which astonished (and pleased) the horse so much that it stopped to look at itself in a mirror. So then the roller-skating horse gets to perform his tricks, and I have to say the one thing that bugged me about the story was that the illustrations make it look like rollerblades, when it kept saying roller skates and the tricks named definitely sound like things you do on quads. Plus they didn’t at all look the right shape/size for a horse’s feet- if you’re going to put a horse in roller skates at least make it look like they would fit! Ha. Oh well. It was a cute story with a very good message. All told in rhyme, as well. I bet it’s fun to read out loud, but I didn’t do that.
Borrowed from the public library.