I would have enjoyed Susanna Bailey’s Snow Foal a lot when I was about ages 10 to 14. I would have liked the free spirit of the main character, how she struggles to be independent, how she needs to go home, and how she learns home can be where the heart is, even if it does not always include all the people you love. As an adult, I still appreciated most things, but sometimes Addie’s attitude left little something to be desired. The other characters of the story help balance that out, but there were a few things that never were completed as I would have liked.
The story started out slow, but once I got into it, things started to move, but they never are “action packed.” Even when Addie is dealing with the foal she helps care for at her foster home and tries to return it to the wild, do things ever get “edgy” or “really wild.” We focus on the thoughts of Addie, a foster child. She is seemingly realistic and is emotional, protective of her mother and distrusts everyone. Just like the wild foal her foster father and brother find on their land one winter. This parallel, of course, runs through the entire book.
Some modern elements are added in (one of the foster kids is adopted by a same-sex couple, the son of the family is actually a former foster child who has been adopted), but the tone also has old-school feeling of something I would have read as a kid in the 1980s (the stereotypical “family” and “love wins”). The story might not be for everyone, but it is an interesting story about coming to terms with what makes a family, friendship and trust. It also shows how the bond between an animal and a person can help heal in many different ways.