Pretending your bicycle is a horse. Combing out the plastic mane of your turquoise “My Little Pony.” Learning the trick of drawing a horse from three circles. Discussing your dream animal – bay or chestnut, Star or Blaze? Except for an envied few, most horse-obsessed girls live these horse dreams entirely in their imaginations, which is why horses and riding are an ideal subject for books. Horse stories are just extensions of the fictions that many young teens have been polishing in their minds for years.

These readers are loyal, voracious, and, in their way, demanding. A new series from Tundra called True Horse Stories looks poised to win them with its first two titles out of the gate, by Alberta writer Judy Andrekson. The stories, told in short chapters with jolly line drawings, are based on real horses and their histories.

In Little Squire we learn of an Irish-born horse who was brought to the U.S. in the 1930s and, in spite of his small stature, became a champion show jumper. The narrative of this book is organized in two converging lines. Little Squire’s story alternates with that of Mickey Walsh, a young Irish immigrant seeking his fortune in the New World. The two storylines merge at a horse show in Long Island.

Andrekson has done a skillful job shaping her source material – mainly family interviews – into a real story, incorporating fascinating details such as the description of a “flapper race.” Her characterization of the human protagonists is overly reliant on the clunky formula of two adjectives followed by a noun (“unruly brown hair, large, rough hands, and a long strong stride”) and the little-did-she-know-then method of creating suspense. The style becomes crisper, however, whenever she focuses on horses, in such rhythmical sentences as, “It all went together to create a smooth, floating trot, an even canter, and enormous power over the jumps.” Little Squire is a satisfying read, and imaginative teachers will want to use it as another perspective on the topic of New World immigration.

But it was Miskeen: The Dancing Horse that really sent me galloping back to the wholly imaginary paddock of my childhood. The first part of the story is fiction, then it gradually opens up to the known facts of Miskeen’s life. Bulgarian-born Miskeen, who was trained as a circus horse in the 1980s, learned to walk on his hind legs, jump through fire, and, most importantly, dance to music.

In this book Andrekson really embraces the storytelling heart of her material. Tormented by a boy with a whip, Miskeen lashed back, biting the child. His heartbreaking punishment was to have all his teeth pulled. The tragic core of the book involves the animal’s near-death followed by his rehabilitation and survival. Remember those scenes of ill treatment in Black Beauty? That’s the territory.

Andrekson fully exploits the story’s biographical potential, with a high degree of emotional engagement, complicated relationships and issues, and a well-realized personality. She boldly throws caution about anthropomorphism to the wind and takes us inside Miskeen’s mind, showing us how he experiences the world through sound and smell, and how he feels joy, fear, irritation, hatred, and pride. Her stance on the controversy about circuses is largely pro-circus while leaving room for dissenting opinion. The complications of Miskeen’s life are beautifully contained in the single image that begins and ends the book, that of a solitary dancing horse. Having once learned to dance, Miskeen continued to do so throughout his life, when he was alone and especially if he heard music. “He would move with his eyes half closed, his ears relaxed, and with the expression of a creature reliving a memory that did not belong to the here and now.” Andrekson leaves the obvious parallel – the question of how young humans respond to neglect, inconsistency, and tyranny – entirely to the reader.

Enjoying these two books made me think again about the appeal of horse stories. Part of it is obvious – the beauty of horses, the thrill of speed, the pleasure of mastering new skills, the camaraderie of riders. But for the young reader there are two particular pleasures. One is tech talk. When you hear about bellybands and side reins, blazes and stockings, dressage and piaffe, you feel invited into a specialized and very grown-up arena. The other invitation to the adult world involves questions of the uses and abuses of power. Physical strength, psychological mastery, moral toughness. As you jockey for your place in the hierarchies of early adolescence there are no issues of more immediate concern than these.