"Skags The Milk Horse" by Miriam Blanton Huber, Great Children's Literature From 1931

The first time I came across this book, I bought a copy of it at a large flea market in Northern Indiana, and almost immediately sold it online for a nice profit. In addition to being one of the nicest little pickups I had ever had in that interesting and exciting (at times) pursuit of finding, buying, and either keeping or reselling found objects, this little book has always fascinated me for several reasons. It had survived to be found more than 75 years later in a flea market. I have also spent years of my life working in equine related jobs, more than 20 years in the Thoroughbred horse business and almost four years with the private juvenile treatment company Vision Quest, nearly all of which I spent on the Vision Quest Wagon Trains, riding down the highways of the Eastern United States on one of the best horses I ever knew stopping oncoming traffic on a horse while holding a hand held stop sign. That kind of partnership with a horse is the kind of experience that can give you a lifetime of memories and that mustang, Teepee, and I had a helluva parentership. This book is about a draft horse of unknown breed and a milk delivery man who had that same kind of partnership. The book is 111 pages written by Miriam Blanton Huber and illustrated by Curtiss Sprague. Huber wrote at least 50 or 60 books. Sprague can be found listed as the author or illustrator of about a dozen books. Good biographical information cannot be located online for either of the two. The American Book Company which published the book existed from 1890 to 1981 as an independent publisher of educational books for students at all levels of American education. It ceased to exist as an independent imprint in 1980 after almost 100 years as a publishing company. Another company, unrelated to the original American Book Company, now operates under the same name. The book contains a page labeled "Note" which states that the vocabulary of the book is "512 words of which 81 percent are found in "Gates' Reading Vocabulary for the Primary Grades" and 51 percent are found in the first five hundred words of the Gates list." I have never before encountered the Gates list. I have learned that an author and psychologist named Arthur Irving Gatesin the early twentieth century produced several books in the fields of psychology, education, and the blended discipline of educational psychology. I have since learned that Gates lived from 1890 to 1971 and was an expert on vocabulary in early childhood education. If I had never gotten another positive thing from this book, I would have learned about the lives of three educational professionals who obviously had some positive impact on each of their fields. But, you ask, what about "Skags The Milk Horse". Skags, the hero of the book, is a draft horse who pulls a milk wagon through the streets of an unnamed city, and is driven each day by his regular driver and partner Jim Clark. The milk company has a building and lot somewhere on a city street which is designed in such a way that the milk bottling and distribution operation is on the ground floor and the horse stable is on the second floor with a stall for each horse, a large harness room, an attendant, and a cat named Tibbs who is Skags' friend. Each night, in the middle of the night, the horses are harnessed by their drivers, hitched to their wagons which have been parked in the large lot behind the building, loaded with milk, and set out around the town to make their deliveries. Naturally, each driver and horse have an assigned route with regular customers. Skags and Jim Clark go from house to house and Skags actually knows which houses he is supposed to stop at while Jim delivers the milk. But one day in winter,Jim falls on ice after having walked down an alley between two streets to deliver milk to the only two houses he has on that street. He has left Skags and the wagon on the first street and after his fall he is unconscious and transported to a hospital. No one comes to do anything with Skags and the wagon. Skags waits patiently for Jim until about noon when he finally leaves the spot he has been left in and follows his regular route back to the milk company where no one knows yet that Jim has fallen. Eventually, the hospital calls the milk company when Jim regains consciousness. In the meantime, Skags has found his way back to the milk company and is seen as a hero for knowing his route well enough to return to the company with the wagon, honoring the stop signs and red lights, following his routine, and being safe the entire time. The book describes a very humane operation of the horse stable and the care and handling of the horses. It delivers a wonderful story of the kind of partnership a human and a working horse can establish when they are together nealry every day doing their jobs. Yes, it an aged book and unlikely to ever by used in an educational setting again, except by one or two dedicated teachers who stray into a copy and use it is as auxillary material in a classroom. The book also gives a good history lesson about how milk was processed and delivered in urban areas as American cities grew larger and larger before the common use of automobiles and trucks. The one flaw in the book, possibly, is the fact that the author describes the horse stable as being on the second floor of the building above the milk processing facility. Even in the 1930's when the FDA was much less stringent in their regulation of foods and drugs, it seems unlikely to me that a milk company would have stabled ther horses on a floor above the processing plant. Otherwise, this is a fine early childhood book which is appropriate for grades somewhere between three and five. If you are a horse person or an elementary teacher who likes to use auxillary material in class, this is a fine book to own.