When a horse went to school: 25-year-old mare inspires potential young authors

It’s not unusual to see a horse in the school – less common when it’s the primary school variety, with a crowd of agog young children.

Helen Haraldsen, who writes the Amber’s Pony Tales books, made an author visit to Lowca Community School in west Cumbria even more memorable than usual when she turned up on her 25-year-old mare Maddy.

“I was vaguely interesting, but the children were much more interested in her!” Helen told H&H.

Helen teaches secondary-school English two days per week as well as writing her children’s books, which have been in the pipeline for years.

“They’ve been out since 2019 but I wrote the first book in 2004; it took me 15 years to get published,” she said. “I was submitting them and hearing nothing, or getting rejections, and thinking ‘I can’t do this’. But you hear about really successful people who have been turned down, it’s a right of passage, so I tried again and was successful. It was amazing, the achievement of a lifetime.

“They’re based on the adventures I had on my pony in the Pony Club as a child – lots of things that happen in the books happened to me or friends.”

The school Helen visited on Monday (12 June) is in the village where her parents, and her horses, live.

“They got in touch to say they’ve got a new library, and would I open it,” she said. “So I said that I write pony stories, my ponies live nearby, so would they like me to arrive on horseback, as that’s a massive thing for kids. Author visits are always memorable but for one to arrive on a horse in the playground was very exciting. When I was at school, my friends always used to say I should arrive on a horse so it was surreal to me after all this years to go to school on a horse.”

Having “clip-clopped into the playground”, Helen kept Maddy with her while she spoke to the children, after which her father hacked the mare home.

“I said horses and ponies had inspired me to write, and given me the skills to do it,” she said. “You have to be determined and persevere with riding, and that helped me persevere with writing, or I think I’d have given up. I got them to think.

“Even the younger kids were interested about how real life had inspired me; most kids think they can’t write because they can’t imagine a Lord of the Rings-type story but I say ‘You’ve all got your own story’. That’s what I do, write about what I’m passionate about; I couldn’t write a book about rugby, but some of them might. It’s not about how clever you are, it’s where your passion lies, and I think some of them got something from that.”

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