Spirit Riding Free: The Adventure Begins

by Suzanne Selfors, Saskia Maarleveld (Read by)

Overview

Twelve-year-old Lucky Prescott craves adventure, but as a young lady of society she’s only been allowed to experience it through books. That is, until one fateful day when she, her father, and her aunt leave their neat and tidy city life and travel to their new home out west—the Wild West.At first Lucky is excited, but during the long train ride to her new hometown of Miradero, she begins to worry. What if she doesn’t make any new friends? Everyone in the west rides horses, but she’s never been allowed to even sit on one. How can she possibly fit in? Anxious about the future, Lucky looks out the train and sees a majestic wild stallion. When their eyes meet, she senses a connection. When the stallion is caught by wranglers, her heart breaks. And when she next sees the stallion, he’s tied to a post, refusing to be broken.Spirit Riding Free: The Adventure Begins is the story of a girl and a wild horse equally out of place in a strange new world but equally fierce and brave. With each other to lean on, will these two free spirits be able to find a home together?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781478949084
Publisher:	Hachette Book Group
Publication date:	05/02/2017
Edition description:	Unabridged

About the Author

Suzanne Selfors is the author of the Imaginary Veterinary series, the Smells like Dog series, Fortune’s Magic Farm, To Catch a Mermaid, and many other titles. Her books have earned five Junior Library Guild Awards, a Washington State Book Award, a Kid’s Indie Pick, and a Scholastic Book Fair bestseller, as well as being included in Bank Street’s one-hundredth edition of Best Children’s Books, Smithsonian Magazine’s Notable Children’s Books, and Amazon’s Best Children’s Books.

Saskia Maarleveld is an experienced voice-over actress and AudioFile Earphones Award–winning audiobook narrator. Raised in New Zealand and France, she is highly skilled with accents and dialects, and many of her books have been narrated entirely in accents other than her own. In addition to audiobooks, her voice can be heard in animation, video games, and commercials.

Editorial Reviews

Praise for Spirit Riding Free: The Adventure Begins:

"...the fresh voice and unbridled enthusiasm of both girl and horse will inspire anyone dealing with their own isolation and teasing. A wild ride that will make spirits soar."——Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

2017-03-15
Finishing school is no place for an adventurous, high-energy girl, so when Fortuna "Lucky" Esperanza Navarro Prescott's widower father is called west to supervise the railroad's last push to the Pacific, she begs to accompany him. But when biracial (white/Latina) Lucky, her white, railroad-magnate father, and his sister, Cora, arrive in Miradero after a long train ride, it is nothing like any of them imagined. With her father busy with work, it is up to Lucky and her aunt to set up their home and make friends. Stuffy Cora soon finds her society ways at odds with the reality of her new home. And Lucky realizes that unless she learns to ride a horse, she will forever be on the outside. When she meets a wild stallion penned in town, Lucky hopes that she has inherited more than her dark hair and brown skin from her trick-riding mother, a former circus performer who died when she was 2. Inspired by the 2002 movie Spirit: Stallion of Cimarron, Lucky's adventures in her new home will woo history fans and Western buffs alike. Lucky's bicultural heritage is given short shrift, and Miradero's race relations feel ahistorical at best; snobbish Mrs. Gutierriez, the mayor's wife (and mother of mean girl Maricela), bemoans the difficulty of finding good help to the equally snooty Cora. But the fresh voice and unbridled enthusiasm of both girl and horse will inspire anyone dealing with their own isolation and teasing. A wild ride that will make spirits soar. (Historical fiction. 8-12)

Kirkus Reviews