The Silver Pony

First edition cover

The Silver Pony: A Story in Pictures is an illustrated children's book by American artist Lynd Ward, published in 1973.

Summary

The story tells of a farmboy who finds a silver winged pony, which he lures with an apple and then flies through forests, deserts, cities, and into outer space. The boy awakens to discover it all a dream—but that in waking life his father has bought him a real silver pony.[1]

Production, publication, and reception

Ward executed the 80 wordless drawings that make up the book in casein.[2] It was published in 1973 by Houghton, Mifflin.[3]

Though it shares the form and length of Ward's wordless novels, it is not classified as one.[4] The book won the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award, the Children's Book Showcase Award,[5] and was a Boston Globe–Horn Picturebook Honor Book.[6]

Background

Ward first rose to public attention with the publication of Gods' Man in 1929, a wordless novel in engraved woodblocks. He made five more, the last of which was Vertigo in 1937, after which he worked on a variety of graphic projects, primarily in woodblocks.[3] Some work was for children's books, for which he won awards such as a Newbery Medal for his illustrations to Elizabeth Coatsworth's The Cat Who Went to Heaven (1930), and a Caldecott Medal for his The Biggest Bear (1952).[7] The Silver Pony was the first wordless book Ward published since he had produced Vertigo.[2]

References

  1. ^ Houp 2003, p. 10.
  2. ^ a b Beronä 2010, p. vi.
  3. ^ a b Rights 1995, p. 430.
  4. ^ Houp 2003, p. 11.
  5. ^ Martin 2015, p. 263.
  6. ^ Galda et al. 2013, p. 410.
  7. ^ Houp 2003, pp. 16–17.

Works cited

  • Beronä, David A., ed. (2010). "Introduction". Prelude to a Million Years & Song Without Words: Two Graphic Novels. Dover Publications. pp. iii–vi. ISBN 978-0-486-47269-0.
  • Galda, Lee; Sipe, Lawrence; Liang, Lauren; Cullinan, Bernice (2013). Literature and the Child. Cengage Learning. ISBN 978-1-133-60207-1.
  • Houp, Trena R. (2003). There and Back Again: A Brief Survey of Wordless Picturebooks (PDF) (Masters). University of Florida. Retrieved 2015-11-26.
  • Martin, William Patrick (2015). Wonderfully Wordless: The 500 Most Recommended Graphic Novels and Picture Books. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. ISBN 978-1-4422-5478-7.
  • Rights, Edith Anderson (Fall 1995). "The Cover". Libraries & Culture. 30 (4). University of Texas Press: 428–431. JSTOR 25542803.