Shipwreck off the Spanish coast: a boy and an untamed Arab stallion the sole survivors. This promising situation, led up to by a logical sequence of events, is used in [The Black Stallion,] an adventure story whose outsize plot is curbed by a firm attention to the relationship between the hero, Alec Ramsay, an American high-school boy, and the stallion who comes to be known as the Black. (p. 3406) [The subsequent books in the Black Stallion series] are essentially tales of a horse and its fortunes and at ti...

Since the appearance in 1941 of Walter Farley's first book, "The Black Stallion," readers have been clamoring for more and more of his thrilling horse tales. ["The Black Stallion's Filly"] is certain to run nose to nose in popularity with its predecessors. The black stallion's first daughter, Black Minx, pulls many a trick on her trainer and owner…. [In] the five months between her purchase and the Kentucky Derby, they succeed in changing her from a sp...

This sequel to the very popular book The Black Stallion is not remarkable in style, plot or characterization, yet [The Black Stallion Returns] has pace and verve and holds the reader's interest throughout. Central theme, the love of Alec for his horse, has all the elements of sure-fire popularity with young people twelve and over. Dorotha Dawson, "New Books Appraised: 'The Black Stallion Returns'," in Library Journal (reprinted from Library Journal, November 1...