When I was a kid I probably read Misty of Chincoteague about 50 times. I kid you not, starting in maybe 5th grade and up through most of middle school I read it a lot. I read all of Marguerite Henry’s books A LOT. I still own a majority of her books, and could tell you major plot points.
We recently finished reading this as our night time read aloud. We don’t really do anything special with our read alouds besides talk about them. I particularly enjoyed listening to the kids discover one of my favorites, and their amazement when they found out it was a true story.
Ever since we finished the book Princess has been carrying around my Misty Breyer horse along with her foals Stormy and Phantom Wings. She carefully sets them up and lets them eat anything she eats, and makes sure they’re okay.
Sadly the 1960s movie isn’t available on DVD to watch, I tried. I got to see it in the theater at Chincoteague when I visited there at 13 years old.
So, to sum up. Read the book, then if your child is a horse lover of any sort read all the rest of her books, they’re all great reads and most of them have some basis in history….. Hmmmm……. Maybe I’ll have us read Black Gold when we get to the 20th century, or Justin Morgan had a Horse (though we’ve past that one for history).
I never heard of this book, but it sounds interesting. I’ll be looking for it! Thanks for joining WMCIR!
I’m thinking this would be perfect for Anna, it’s right at her reading level and it’s got animals in it.
I have never heard of this book. I’ll have to look for it.
And bonus, you live close enough to Chincoteague to make a field trip without it being a cross country trip. It’s a lot of fun to go to, especially if you go during Pony Penning.
We read Misty while we camped at Assateague Island and we saw the ponies every day. It was magical and the book so came to life for them. Quentin was about three and he called the area “ponyland” and that has stuck!
Oh that would be magical. When I visited there as a young teen I remember thinking it was amazing. We stayed the whole week of Pony Penning and were able to make several field trips the Misty museum, but Assteague Island was closed at that time due to Pony Penning coming up, or that’s the memory I had. I’m not really sure why, now that I think about it.
We read this one two years ago for our co-op book club. Everyone loved it! Looks like y’all did too.
We did, I was surprised how much the boys liked it.
Our very favorite Marguerite Henry book is “Brighty: of the Grand Canyon”. We also loved “Justin Morgan Had a Horse” and the White Stallion of Lipizza.”
I’d forgotten about “The White Stallion of Lipizza,” I need to find it, because it was one of my favorites as a girl.
This book sounds familiar – maybe I read it as a kid. I’ll have to look for a copy.
There is a movie titled ‘Misty’ that is based on the book. My local library has it.
I think I saw that one as a kid. Sadly our library doesn’t have it, and I wasn’t able to order it anywhere. It’s really cute if you get a chance to see it.
Hi Ticia, I was looking at another of your recent posts and saw a link to this one. I decided to check it out because Misty of Chincoteague is one of my childhood favorites as well. I actually have the movie on DVD–can’t remember where I bought it. I just checked Amazon, and they do carry it. 🙂
Oh, I’ll have to add it to my wish list. When I checked a few years ago when I first wrote this post they didn’t have it.