The Saddle Club (books)
The Saddle Club is a series of intermediate children's books published by Bantam Books between 1988 and 2001. The series was created by a publishing house using the contract writing services of self-professed equestrian novice Bonnie Bryant. Many titles were also written by ghostwriters. Spin-offs include four other book series: The Saddle Club Super Editions, The Saddle Club Inside Stories, Pony Tails, and Pine Hollow. The books were adapted into a TV show also called The Saddle Club. In the 1990s, there was also a fan club with a monthly newsletter and a line of model horses manufactured by Breyer.
The books follow the adventures of best friends Carole Hanson, Stevie Lake, and Lisa Atwood, who live in the fictional town of Willow Creek, Virginia, and ride at Pine Hollow Stables. In the first book of the series, Horse Crazy, Carole and Lisa help Stevie with her mathematics project, which launches the girls' friendship and the titular club.
At the beginning of the series, Carole and Stevie are twelve-year-old seventh-graders and Lisa is a thirteen-year-old eighth-grader. Although the characters live through several vacations and years of school, they do not age until the "Pine Hollow" series.
The Saddle Club is written in a third-person style. In early books, the narration was third-person limited and shifted from character to character, often offering more insight into the thoughts and feelings of The Saddle Club and their friends; in later books, the narrative style became much more omniscient.
In 2003 the series was awarded a BILBY Award.
Two additional types and two series of books were spun off following the popularity of The Saddle Club.
The Saddle Club Super Edition books also focus on Carole, Lisa, and Stevie, but are longer and occasionally written in a different style. For example, Super Edition #1, A Summer Without Horses, is broken into four sections, and the first three are about Lisa, Stevie, and Carole's personal experiences. Other Super Editions follow the same third-person narrative style of the regular series. For more information about the Super Editions, see the List of Saddle Club books.
The Inside Story books are written as diaries or journals. In each, the premise is that the title character - Stevie, Lisa, or Carole - is doing a project or writing a journal that requires her to explain her impressions of events in regular The Saddle Club books that involved all three girls. The Inside Story books are longer than the Super Editions. For more information about the Inside Story books, see the List of Saddle Club books.
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