“I started writing stories in sixth grade. But writing wasn’t cool, like being good at sports, or being part of the in crowd, or winning fights on the playground. It wasn’t a ‘normal’ activity, and like most kids that age, I desperately wanted to be ‘normal’. So writing became my secret life.
“At the age of sixteen I completed a novel – a book-length series of stories about two characters. The narrator is a boy who admires his best friend, who is a kind of genius, and the gifted friend eventually dies a tragic death. The two buddies hang out in the basement and share a series of adventures. It was rejected. No surprise, actually, because I wasn’t like the genius kid I was writing about. The book simply wasn’t good enough to be published.
“Eleven years after I finished that first novel, I was still unpublished. But I was determined to make my living as an author. So I kept writing. In the meantime, I worked a variety of labouring jobs – longshoreman, carpenter, boat builder – and started a couple of businesses that went nowhere. Finally, I found a publisher for my genre novels, which were mostly mysteries and thrillers for grown-ups.
“After I had written more than a dozen adult genre novels, an editor I knew in New York asked me to write a mystery for young adults. I said I wasn’t interested; but on my way home to Maine, I heard a voice in my head. It was the voice of Maxwell Kane, and he wanted to tell me the story of his little genius buddy. The voice in my head became Freak the Mighty, and much of it came directly out of the novel I had written as a sixteen year old.
“That insistent kid voice in my head has helped me reinvent myself as a writer. That voice is still talking, demanding that I write down his story. It was that voice that made me realize that I do, indeed, have stories to tell for sixth, seventh, and eighth graders – stories about spirited kids who find a way to triumph over adversity.
“How do you keep the voice coming? A good memory helps. I vividly remember my sixth-grade classroom. I remember what it smelled like, where I sat, what I could see out the window, and how I felt about things. Peel away my decrepit middle-aged exterior, and an important part of me is still twelve years old. It helps me when I sit down to write stories for kids.
“And here’s where the Young Adult author gets the big payoff. If a kid enjoys a book, she or he really enjoys it. Kids read uncritically, in the best sense of the word. They care about how the story makes them feel. If a story makes any impression at all, they write to the author. Let me tell you, those letters are just wonderful. The vast majority of young readers speak to you straight from the heart. I liked this part, it made me laugh. I liked that part, it made me cry. That was the wonderful surprise, the something extra I never expected in my secret life as a writer. Letters from kids I’ve never met, but who speak to me with a clarity and personality that makes them leap from the page.
“I love getting these fresh, wonder-filled messages from kids. As a writer I’m convinced that encouraging children to write fiction, to hook into that marvellous machine called the imagination, has to be good for everyone. It’s good for the teachers who see students bloom into writers under their tutelage. It’s good for the kids, who learn that they can work the same kind of magic they find in books. It’s good for all of us, because soon these kids are going to emerge as the next generation of authors – and there won’t have to be any ‘secret’ about it.”
Read on for a sneak preview of Fire Pony by Rodman Philbrick
1
Catch a Sight of Heaven
“We’ll just keep moving,” Joe Dilly says to me. “Pick up a job here and there. Anybody looks at us cross-eyed, we hit the road. You with me on this, little brother?”
I go, “Sure, Joe, I’m with you,” even though inside I’m still pretty worried about all the bad stuff catching up.
We’re coming down from the high mountains in that old Ford pickup truck with the camper back, and Joe’s whistling and tapping his hands on the wheel, like he don’t care if the cops want to talk to him about that fire back in Montana.
“Look around,” he says, pointing out the window. “It’ll help put your mind at ease.”
He’s right. It’s hard to stay worried when every turn in the road there’s something brand-new to look at. Trees so high you can’t see the tops, and sometimes these open pastures that roll right on down to the edge of the world.
All of a sudden – bang! – that old right front tyre blows out like a gunshot and I’m hanging on for dear life with the truck bucking and heaving like an unbroken horse. And Joe Dilly, well, you never heard nobody can curse like Joe Dilly when he’s in the mood.
He finally manages to wrestle the truck over to the side of the road, near this thick stand of tall trees, and you can tell how the mountain drops away real steep right under those trees.
“Just step aside,” Joe Dilly says, rubbing his hands together. Like he’s almost happy that tyre blew, like it was an adventure he’d planned on having, for the fun of it. He’s going, “Make way for Mr. Fix-It,” and “Okay, partner, just you watch while I make this little old truck levitate,” the way he always talks to himself when he’s working.
Pretty soon he’s got the truck jacked up and the bad tyre is lying there like a chunk of roadkill, and I’m kind of wandering along by the edge of the road, looking to catch a peek at whatever critters are hiding in the dark shadowy places under those tall trees.
“Hey, Joe!” I go. “Are there mountain lions round here?”
He looks up from where he’s spinning the tyre wrench. “Mountain lions?” he says. “You bet your bottom dollar, sports fans! This here is mountain lion country.”
“You ever shoot a lion, Joe?”
He gives me that flinty, squinty look of his, and then he winks and goes, “Nah. Saw one once, coming over the ridge.”
“What’d you do?”
“Ran like a man on fire,” he says, and then he’s back whistling and working.
I keep following along the side of the road and suddenly there’s this gap in the trees and you can see all the way down the mountain into this big, golden valley.
Something about that valley, the way it seems all glowy and filled with light, it makes my heart thump hard against my ribs. It’s almost as if I’m afraid to take another breath or blink my eyes or it’ll be like something you see in a dream, something really special that fades away as soon as you wake up, and then you can’t remember why it was so important.
I sing out, “Joe! Come here and look at this!”
“Whatcha got, a big old lion? Probably a tree stump looks like a lion.”
“I catched a sight of heaven, Joe!”
Which gets his attention. Before I know it, Joe Dilly is standing right behind me, looking over the top of my head, and his voice changes and gets real quiet.
“I’ll be darned,” he says. “And look there, off to the south. I spy a ranch.”
“I can’t see it,” I say.
“There.”
He points far off, and now I can see the glinting where the sunlight hits off the metal roofs. There’s a lot of barns and outbuildings, and a bigger, sprawling place must be the main ranch house. And you can see the dark little speckles moving over the floor of the valley, if you look hard enough.
“Horses, Joe. I see horses.”
“Yep,” says Joe. “Horses.”
The way he says it, you know that horses are his favourite kind of critters, and that includes most people.
“Can we go there, Joe?” I say. “You think we’re far enough from Montana?”
I’m hoping maybe this time things will work out. That’s when I feel both his hands on my shoulders, and Joe gives me a little squeeze. He says, “Tell you what, Roy. We’ll give her a look. We can do that much.”
“It sure is pretty,” I say.
He’s quiet for a minute and then he goes, “Lots of things look pretty from this far off.”
Fire Pony by Rodman Philbrick
Roy and his big brother, Joe, are on the run from the
ir past. When they fetch up at the Bar None ranch their shared passion for horses soon wins them great respect, and Roy is offered the chance of a lifetime – to break in a wild pony that runs like the desert wind. He is even promised that if he can ride Lady Luck, he can keep her – a dream come true.
But Roy knows that Joe has a dangerous secret… a dark obsession that could explode at any time and send Roy’s dreams, and their whole world, up in smoke.
“Rodman Philbrick’s gripping cowboy story with menace reads like John Steinbeck.” The Sunday Times
ePub ISBN 9781409591078
Freak the Mighty by Rodman Philbrick
Max is used to people being scared of him and calling him stupid because he’s big and slow and looks like his dad, Killer Kane. Kevin is used to people laughing at him and calling him Freak because he’s a crippled kid. But when the two boys meet, they form an extraordinary friendship. With Freak’s incredible intelligence and imagination, and Max’s great physical strength, they make an unstoppable team. With Kevin riding high on Max’s shoulders, they become Freak the Mighty.
“A small classic, funny-sad, page-turning and memorable… It celebrates language, loyalty and imagination, and leaves you smiling.” The Sunday Times
An American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults
A Judy Lopez Memorial Award Honour Book
ePub ISBN 9781409591054
For more inspirational stories go to:
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This ebook edition first published in the UK in 2015. First published in the UK in 2005. Second edition published in the UK in 2008 by Usborne Publishing Ltd., Usborne House, 83-85 Saffron Hill, London EC1N 8RT, England. www.usborne.com
First published in the UK in 2005. Text copyright © Rodman Philbrick, 2000.
Published by arrangement with Scholastic Inc., 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012, USA.
Cover copyright © Usborne Publishing Ltd., 2008.
The right of Rodman Philbrick to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
The name Usborne and the devices are Trade Marks of Usborne Publishing Ltd.
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This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ePub ISBN 9781409591092
Batch no. 00572-01
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