National Velvet — Enid Bagnold

Fourteen-year-old Velvet Brown, the daughter of a butcher in a small Sussex town between the World Wars, is the ugly sister among four beauties. She is horse mad and ends her nightly prayers with "Oh, God, give me horses, give me horses! Let me be the best rider in England!" When she wins a piebald horse in a raffle, she knows the horse is something special. His heart is as big as the five-foot fences he jumps, and he'll do anything for Velvet. Velvet is determined to turn Pie, the unruly horse, into a champion and personally ride him to victory in the world's greatest steeplechase. But can a girl win the Grand National? Velvet soon learns that it will take more than hard work and dedication to achieve her goal -- she will also need love, courage, and the magical power of childhood dreams. She and her friend Mi, the assistant in her dad's butcher shop, hatch a plan to enter Velvet and the Pie in the Grand National.