Quicksand Pony - Couverture rigide

For years, Joe has lived in hiding with his emotionally disturbed mother in a valley on the Australian coastline. A year after his mother dies, nineyearold Joe decides to secretly follow a young girl named Biddy and her parents on a cattle drive, torn between his growing need for human companionship and his love for the only home he's known. An intriguing, suspensefilled tale of two engaging characters.
Horn Book

How exciting to read a novel for this audience that is so rich and multilayered. It is a gripping adventure story, a tale of survival, and engaging mystery, a touching animal story, and a family saga. All of these elements are held together by a wonderful sense of place and incorporate important yet subtly delivered themes of resilience, independence, and dependence. . . . This book will be easy to recommend to readers of varied interests. School Library Journal, Starred

'Biddy, I'm sorry, we're going to have to leave her.' 'What?' Biddy struggles out of the quicksand. 'You can't leave her! The tide's coming in. She'll drown!' But the pony is trapped and Biddy is forced to go on without her. The next day the only signs of Bella area hoof prints in the sand...with small footprints and the paw marks of a dog. Who has rescued Bella? Who could be so small and be alone on this remote beach? Biddy's search takes her into wild secret country where she discovers the truth about a mysterious disappearance that happened many years ago. Alison Lester's picture books are loved by families around the world. In this gripping adventure story, set in the Australian bush she knows so well, she comes into her own as a writer and a born storyteller.