Martin Waddell

Ponies, ponies, ponies

British Pony Books Home

Doing this page was a real trip round memory lane: my children had many of the Martin Waddell picture books. In fact we still have most of them, squirrelled away for visiting children who aren’t yet up to the sci-fi and chick lit mine have graduated on to.

Martin Waddell (1941 - ) also writes as Catherine Sefton. He was born in Belfast, and this is what’s happened to him since: “I’ve been blown up, buried alive and had cancer as an adult, and survived all these experiences, so I’m a very lucky man. I live where I lived as a child, and nearly all my stories come from things that have happened to me here, at the foot of the Mountain of Mourne.”

He’s written many books, amongst which is one with some horsey content: Harriet and the Haunted School (1984).

Finding the book: easy to find.

Links and sources

Martin Waddell on Fantastic Fiction

Martin Waddell on Walker Books

Terri Wear: Horse Stories: An Annotated Bibliography

Martin Waddell

Harriet and the Haunted School

Abelard Schumann, London, 1984, 67 pp.

Atlantic Monthly Press, 1984 (left)

Joy Street Books, 1984, Boston, 84 pp, illus Mark Burgess

Scholastic Young Hippo, 1985 (right)

Harriet’s friend Anthea wants a horse, so Harriet gets one for her. She borrows it
from the circus, and hides it at school. Horses are tricky things to hide, and the
rest of the school soon start to believe the school is haunted.

Bibliography - horse books only