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The Georges and the Jewels | LitPick Book Reviews
The Georges and the Jewels
The Georges and the Jewels: Book One of the Horses of Oak Valley Ranch
The Georges and the Jewels
Jane Smiley
A Pulitzer Prize winner makes her debut for young readers.Jane Smiley makes her debut for young readers in this stirring novel set on a California horse ranch in the 1960s. Seventh-grader Abby Lovitt has always been more at ease with horses than with people. Her father insists they call all the mares “Jewel” and all the geldings “George” and warns Abby not to get attached: the horses are there to be sold. But with all the stress at school (the Big Four have turned against Abby and her friends) and home (her brother Danny is gone—for good, it seems—and now Daddy won’t speak his name), Abby seeks refuge with the Georges and the Jewels. But there’s one gelding on her family’s farm that gives her no end of trouble: the horse who won’t meet her gaze, the horse who bucks her right off every chance he gets, the horse her father makes her ride and train, every day. She calls him the Ornery George.

Book Details

Genre: 

  • Fiction
  • Juvenile Fiction

Age Level: 

  • 12 and up
Profile Picture

The Georges and the Jewels is set on a horse farm in California. Abby, a seventh-grader, lives on the farm with her parents, and misses her brother Danny, who left home to work for the local horse-shoer because he had a fight with his parents. Abby's parents' goal is to train and sell each horse within six months, so they try to stop Abby from becoming attached by naming all the geldings "George" and all the mares "Jewel." Abby does most of the work of caring for, riding, and training the horses. The author takes more time describing the horses than the people.

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