The Year in Horses: 1982

1982

• The children’s novel War Horse by Michael Morpurgo was first
  published this year. The story follows a boy named Albert and a horse named
  Joey after they are separated at the outbreak of World War I. The novel won a
  Whitbread Book Award, a prize given to authors in Great Britain and Ireland (now known as the Costa
  Book Award.) A stage adaptation of the novel debuted in London in 2007 and came to Broadway in 2010,
  where it earned sever Tony Awards. A film adaptation is due out in December
  2011.

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In the Pages of Horse Illustrated
Years before Young Rider magazine existed, Horse Illustrated had a Young Riders section in each issue. In January/February 1982, one of our young readers wrote in telling the story of how she learned the hard way that barbed wire is not appropriate fencing for horses. Nearly 30 years later, we still like to remind our readers of this fact every time we run an article about pastures or fencing. If we’ve told you once, we’ve told you a thousand times…

You may also notice that we published our young readers’ mailing addresses at the end of their submissions. In fact, back then the pen pal program that today’s Young Rider subscribers enjoy was simply a page of addresses that we published in the magazine, allowing anyone with a stamp to send letters to the kids who submitted their addresses. Oh, that was a simpler time (or not. It was the 1980s, the decade with the highest crime rate of the past 100 years. What were we thinking? What were their parents thinking??)

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