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(Please bear with me that I cannot find a translation for the second title; how am I supposed to translate "Ponyglück"? "Happyness with ponies"?)
Her husband dead as a prisoner of war, writer Lise Gast finds herself and her eight children in Westphalia after fleeing Silesia in the post-WWII confusion. She and her children always wanted to have ponies. Starting with one, it turns out that their landlord and hoofed animals are no match, but soon they find a small farm in Swabia to rent and to settle down for good.
The books have no plot, but rather tell lots of stories the Gasts experience with their ponies, and, after a story in a photo magazine and a cinema newsreel feature, an endless stream of visitors.
These books were among my childhood favorites, and I have read them several times each. Now, after probably more than 30 years, it is fun to read them again and find them still extremely familiar. As with other books I have reread after decades, it is interesting to find now and then something, a sentence, a notion, an opinion, that has left an impression in my view of the world far longer than I remembered where it was from.
Post scriptum: While I really enjoy these books, I don't have any special relationship with ponies or horses. I like them, I can understand people who want to spend their life with them to some degree, but I am not one of them. I have never felt the urge for horse riding myself, although I understand it can be great.
Her husband dead as a prisoner of war, writer Lise Gast finds herself and her eight children in Westphalia after fleeing Silesia in the post-WWII confusion. She and her children always wanted to have ponies. Starting with one, it turns out that their landlord and hoofed animals are no match, but soon they find a small farm in Swabia to rent and to settle down for good.
The books have no plot, but rather tell lots of stories the Gasts experience with their ponies, and, after a story in a photo magazine and a cinema newsreel feature, an endless stream of visitors.
These books were among my childhood favorites, and I have read them several times each. Now, after probably more than 30 years, it is fun to read them again and find them still extremely familiar. As with other books I have reread after decades, it is interesting to find now and then something, a sentence, a notion, an opinion, that has left an impression in my view of the world far longer than I remembered where it was from.
Post scriptum: While I really enjoy these books, I don't have any special relationship with ponies or horses. I like them, I can understand people who want to spend their life with them to some degree, but I am not one of them. I have never felt the urge for horse riding myself, although I understand it can be great.