I carried a weathered copy of The King of the Wind as a support book from grade three to six pretty much. It is an all time favorite and you’re right - I’m not quite sure why this one stood out among all the horse books I read as a child. But I’ll take a stab at it. Sham is a great horse protagonist, maybe in part because he is always an underdog and never has a famous career. His greatness is like a secret and that feels both relatable and vindicating when we know so many famous horses are descended from him. It probably also hit right in terms of being a serious story without being hard to read. I could read it before I was going to slog through Black Beauty or even The Black Stallion. But it wasn’t about young girls inexplicably bonding with race horses (which I loved, don’t get me wrong - I had a long go with the Thoroughbred series) and it had a richer world to get lost in.

Sham muscling in to mate with the prize mare instead of the puffed up stallion that was planned for it is such a gleeful moment of triumph. Kind of odd that this was the highlight of the book for a third grader, but there it is. You’re rooting for him so hard, and this is one of the very few ‘wins’ he ever gets, and he does it on pure style. Do the famous racehorses come from that pairing? I can’t remember now!