I am overwhelmingly prejudiced in favor of horseflesh, and I must admit to enjoying [The Black Stallion's Ghost] immensely. It opens with a stunning description of an exhibition of dressage and proceeds through a series of genuinely horrifying adventures in the Everglades involving a fetish called the Kovi. The Black Stallion is clever, brave, and good-looking, and as far as I can judge, honest, reverent, and clean…. [In] his artless horsey way he seems to me to carry on the satisfactory tradition of Black Beauty.

Martha Bacon, "Tantrums and Unicorns," in The Atlantic Monthly (copyright © 1969, by The Atlantic Monthly Company, Boston, Mass.; reprinted with permission), Vol. 224, No. 6, December, 1969, p. 150.

When [in The Black Stallion and the Girl], Alec Ramsay, the Black Stallion's rider, hires a girl to care for the horses on his father's Hopeful Farm, trainer Henry Dailey threatens to quit. Alec argues that sexism is as...