Katy's Exmoor Trilogy
Katy's Exmoor - The Story of an Exmoor Pony
Published April 2002 (ISBN 0 9542021 0 4) £4.50 Paperback.
On her ninth birthday, Katy Squires finds a newborn foal on the moor above her farm. Katy is determined that the foal will be hers, but life is never that simple....
Katy's high and lows are interwoven with realistic accounts of life on an Exmoor hill farm and the management of free-living Exmoor ponies.
Katy's Exmoor Adventures - The Sequel to Katy's Exmoor
Published: December 1st 2003 (ISBN 0 9542021 1 2 ) £4.95 Paperback.
Katy dreams that Trifle, her Exmoor pony, will become a champion. Her hopes and dreams seem shattered when foot and mouth disease sweeps across the country, and Barton Farm faces financial ruin. With Trifle's help, Katy discovers that it takes more than rosettes to become a real champion....
Katy's Exmoor Friends - The Final Part of the Trilogy
Published August 1st 2005 (ISBN 0 9542021 2 0) £5.50 Paperback
This is the third and final story about Katy and her Exmoor pony, Trifle. As a teenager, Katy faces many challenges. There are new people in her life; some become friends and others don't, but they all affect her in unexpected ways. Katy's life is full of surprises. However, the one she gets on Christmas Eve is the best of all....
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I began to think of writing a story about a girl and an Exmoor pony in 1995, when a foal was born to one of our Exmoor pony mares on a bleak April Fool's Day on Ilkerton Ridge - an area of moorland common above our farm. We called the foal Nipper, after the Exmoor Chris learnt to ride on when he was a boy. I saw Nipper soon after he was born and, to my surprise, he came to say hello to me (despite his mother's obvious disapproval!). From then on he was incredibly friendly towards humans, and he used to come galloping up for a cuddle when he saw us, not realising he was supposed to be wild. This picture is of our daughter, Sarah (then aged five) cuddling Nipper on the moor. She's with her friend Claire Smyth. A few years later (when Sarah was eight) we bought an Exmoor pony called Tinkerbell for her to ride. Tinks and Sarah had great fun together (although to begin with Tinks was rather more spirited than we had bargained for!) and their partnership provided a great deal of inspiration for the Katy's Exmoor stories. This is a photo of Sarah and Tinks at Blackmoor Gate Show. Tinks had done a lot of showing with her previous owners, and was obviously incredibly bored by it. Her idea of fun was riding over Exmoor. Luckily that was Sarah's idea of fun, too! During the foot and mouth crisis of 2001 we put ourselves into voluntary isolation, because we were determined to avoid the disease. I found that at last I had time to write my story about a girl and an Exmoor pony growing up together on an Exmoor hill farm. Katy's Exmoor was the result. |
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Reviews of the Katy's Exmoor Books
Jane Badger, Jane Badger Books website May 2008 www.janebadgerbooks.co.uk
I liked the fact the book is clear of any tinge of the marketing department. No glitz, no stars, and absolutely no pink. Or unicorns. Or magic ponies. There is far more to this book , though, than what it isn't. It is a well-told and absorbing story. Victoria Eveleigh lives and farms on Exmoor and her deep knowledge of the area shows through.
This is a good, well-observed story....It's not written to "appeal" to the youth market, but it does, because Victoria Eveleigh has got it right.
Devon Today, March 2004
This is a particularly wonderful series because, though fictional, it provides educational content with real events and organisations, encouraging children to learn about Exmoor and its famous native breed, and the countryside in general.
Exmoor, The Country Magazine, Winter 2005
Victoria 's characters are so true to life, painted, as it were, with just a few deft strokes -- I sometimes feel that I may well meet them all at South Molton market!
