Book Review: Pride's Challenge

A Fair Trade Book



Title: Pride's Challenge

Author: Joanna Campbell

Author's current web site: http://joannsimonauthor.com/

Publisher: Harper

Date: 1994

ISBN: 0061062073

Length: 182 pages

Quote: “He had stumbled coming out of the starting gate, catching his foreleg with his rear hoof. But the worst damage had been done when Pride had refused to stop running.”

According to a fan site, Joanna Campbell used to have a web site for her briefly popular Thoroughbred Series of paperback novels (based on her experience as a horse owner), but gave it up. Pride's Challenge is volume nine of the Thoroughbred Series of paperback novels about a horse named Wonder's Pride. It's rare these days for a name that makes even that much sense to remain available; the names of thoroughbred horses have to be unique and are limited in length, and most of the logical ones are taken.

The story is also about the pride and vanity of horsey young women. Samantha wants Pride to win; Lavinia wants him to lose. The jacket drawing promises a catfight in which horses are involved. The story doesn't include that, but does include tense scenes in which other humans take sides with Samantha or Lavinia.

Along the way, Samantha also learns a Life Lesson about not interfering in her widowed father's cozy sleepover arrangements with another woman...I think this is supposed to represent a wholesome element in a frivolous adventure story, but I'm not altogether pleased by it. No doubt there are widowed fathers (and mothers) who live in small houses with their teenagers, who wouldn't let the teenagers' boyfriends or girlfriends spend nights in the teenagers' bedrooms, who expect the teenagers not to mind overnight guests of the opposite sex in the parents' bedrooms. I don't think that's a very realistic expectation. It's hard enough for teenagers to control their own socially unacceptable hormonal urges without having to live with other people's indulgence. I say this as a woman who's put her own love life on hold for years rather than move in with my Significant Other and his foster son.

Anyway. Though Samantha is apparently out of high school and not noticeably in college, she's apparently being marketed as an ideal-older-self protagonist for middle school readers, specifically targeting those teenagers who are tired of twitterpation, titillation, and manipulation in every book, movie, and popular song. There's no romance in Samantha's life, although according to the cover drawing Lavinia, who's already married, is the less attractive of the two girls. Some young readers will like Samantha for that reason. Never mind her relationships with other humans; they're interested in her job, and her bond with her employer's horse.

Everything about Pride's Challenge shouts that even the publisher didn't think it's a great book, or needs to be one. It's a romance-free girl-power adventure story. Those who wanted that sort of story enjoyed the Thoroughbred Series. Those who still want that sort of story, and/or want to complete their collections, will want Pride's Challenge.

It's a Fair Trade Book: $5 per book + $5 per package + $1 per online payment, out of which Campbell or Simon or whatever-her-real-name-is, or a charity of her choice, gets $1. If you want four volumes from the Thoroughbred Series (although after volume 14 other people took over writing the series as "Joanna Campbell"), you send us $25 and Campbell/Simon/whoever or her charity gets $4.