Little Black Goes to the Circus!

Little Black Goes to the Circus!
Walter Farley ~ illustrations by James Schucker
Random House, 1963

Written by the author of The Black Stallion, this is the followup to Little Black, A Pony about a boy and his you know what. This is another one of those books from that time period that lead you to believe that animals love to be in captivity at the zoo and/or the circus. (See every book written by Sid Hoff.)

"I call my pony Little Black.
He and I are good friends.
Little Black will do anything for me."

The illustrations are really great, but the story is a little bizarre in today's animal-hugging age. Boy loves horse. Horse loves boy. Horse loves circus. Horse leaves boy for circus. Horse returns to boy. The original Little Black is similiar in that the boy falls for another horse and it makes Little Black sad and the boy laments that Little Black is sad, but boy continues to pick the other horse over Little Black. So... in this book you almost feel like the boy has a little snubbing coming.