Jill Enjoys Her Ponies is the fourth of Ruby Ferguson’s ‘Jill’ books. Here again are Jill and Black Boy and Rapide and many other old friends. This is the story of the Blossom Hall fête and gymkhana and also of a determined young lady named Dinah Dean, who gives Jill more than one awkward moment.
Reviewed by Julie Welch in Slightly Foxed Issue 58.
Pony-mad
JULIE WELCH
I can’t be the only Jill enthusiast who wishes she still had the original, as well as its sequels. I made do with the thumbnails of the covers on Jane Badger’s website. They were my equivalent of Proust’s madeleine. I relived my hauntings of the bookshop in Loughton High Street in the hope of a Jill book I had not yet read; my dreams of competing, just like Jill, at the Horse of the Year Show at the Harringay Arena; the joys of reading in the bath with Jill Enjoys Her Ponies, the publication of which coincided with the arrival in our household of the bath tray, a metal rack that had enough room for a book to be propped alongside soap and flannel. I remembered that the name of one character, Mercy Dulbottle (a bit of a drip), had made me giggle so much I crawled on the floor. I absolutely did.
Extract from Slightly Foxed Issue 58, Summer 2018
