HORSES!

This latest from the overly prolific Gibbons reads like an encyclopedia article but looks even worse due to shockingly abysmal artwork. She covers a history of horses, the names of the parts of their bodies, a brief overview of their physical characteristics and activities, but includes many errors and oversimplifications—a crossbred horse does not necessarily, for example, have “at least one parent that is not a purebred.” (Any horse descended from purebred horses of different breeds is a crossbred.) Hoof oil does not keep hooves from cracking. Grooming a horse does far more than make a horse “look beautiful.” Gibbons’s people always look plastic; here, her horses suffer a wide variety of physical maladies and joint deformations. Worse, all the horses look the same, yet are labeled as different breeds—a Holstein depicted as a smallish animal jumping, a Morgan and a Quarter Horse identical except for color, a yearling just like a Thoroughbred just like a Hackney. For proof that horse books can be accurately and invitingly illustrated with drawings, look to Margot Apple’s Appaloosa to Zebra. For interesting horse books, look anywhere else. (Nonfiction. 5-8)