The first story in The Red Pony was okay. There were some things that just didn't make sense in the story. However, Junius Maltby was hilarious. This story made me think of myself growing old, my beard long, and sitting on a river reading books. ( )

Reviewed by Taylor Rector for TeensReadToo.com

Jody is a young boy whose father buys him a horse. He instantly falls in love with the horse and vows to take good care of it. He names the horse Galiban and the ranch hand, Billy Buck, helps Jody train him.

Then one night there is a cold rain storm and Billy forgets to go out and put a blanket over his horse. When Billy and Jody go to see him the next morning he has a bad cold. And over the next few days he only gets sicker and sicker. On about the fourth day, Jody wakes in the middle of the night and knows something is horribly wrong.

He runs out to the barn and Galiban is gone.

This is a good story and has a lot of meaning. Jody goes through a right of passage in this book and the reader can slowly watch him progress from a boy to a man. Easy, insightful read. ( )

A young boy named Jody gets a little red colt and is over joyed. But when the pony becomes sick he figures out the key to living life sucessfully. I didn't like this book because Steinback was very negative in his writing. ( )

Four short stories about a young boy living on a small ranch in California. All about Jody growing up, learning some bitter lessons about life and death. In the first story, Jody's father gives him a red pony, and it is his responsibility to care for it and train it. Jody delights in the pony's lively spirit and is proud to show him off to his friends. But one day the pony mistakenly gets left out in a rainstorm and becomes ill. The ranch hand, Billy Buck, tries to save the pony but it dies. The descriptions of the pony's sufferings are pretty stark. Jody is angry about the pony's death, and feels betrayed by Billy. The next story opens up with Jody venting his frustration on smaller creatures around him- teasing the dog, killing small birds, etc. Then his attention shifts when an old man shows up from the mountains. He says he was born on the ranch long ago, and now that his life is at an end, he wants to stay there until he dies. But Jody's father doesn't want him hanging around the ranch. In the third story, Jody is allowed to take his father's mare to be bred by a neighbor's stallion, and the new colt will be his. He and Billy watch carefully over the mare's pregnancy, but when it comes time for her to deliver the foal, something goes wrong and Billy must make an instant decision- to save the mare, or fulfill his promise to Jody and give him a live colt. In the last story, Jody's grandfather comes to visit, telling romanticized tales of the times he led a wagon train across the plains, to the delight of Jody, and the great annoyance of his father. Strife ensues when Jody's father openly admits he's sick of hearing his father-in-law's tales.

All the stories have a common theme of death. Jody's first colt dies, and so do his dreams (his fantasies of owning a fierce, prancing stallion were never realistic). His faith in Billy's infallible ability with horses dies. He sees the old man come to the ranch seeking a peaceful place to meet death, and being turned away. He sees his grandfather face the fact that his time of glory is passed, only interesting to small boys. And then he has to confront the reality that he can only have his longed-for colt if the mare dies. Not a pretty picture, all around. Jody isn't a nice, innocent little boy, either. But there's something in this stories that makes them vivid and real, throbbing with life, with the pain of growing up and the hardness of living on a small, poor ranch. I hate to see animals suffer as much as anyone, and yet I love this book. It is just so heartachingly real.

from the DogEar Diary ( )

In this small but mighty Steinbeck book of short stories we get to meet Jody, his ma and pa and the ranch hand, Billy Buck. All four stories are coming of age stories about Jody as he learns life's harsh lessons about the weather, his world, his beloved animals and how life can so cruelly take away from one what is dear to one; but also we see him learn how to appreciate his life and the world around him and what truly matters.
This is a wonderful book; full of hopes, and dreams (some come true and some crushed).
I liked the character of the father. He rang so true for those days and times. I loved Billy Budd and Jody. I even loved the dogs and the horses, for they were characters in this book as well. The mother was just kind of there doing what mothers did in those days and it seemed right that she have not much of an impact on me, but she did on her son.
An awesome little book that I very highly recommend. ( )