KidLit: Satchi and Little Star Is a Lesson in Freedom

With a lesson that the Bureau of Land Management would prefer to ignore, Satchi and Little Star tells the story of a little Grand Turk (Turks and Caicos) girl who is privileged to live in a place where wild horses run free. When Satchi spies a young horse sporting a star and one sock, she wants to make him her own. Her parents tell her “wild horses are meant to be wild,” but that does not deter her efforts to befriend the horse she has named “Little Star.”

Children and horses are a natural combination; it seems that no matter what one’s age, appreciation of the beauty and grace of equines is wired into our consciousness. How many children harbor the wish to one day have their very own horses? Satchi tries to make her wish come true by bringing Little Star water, then carrots, then jelly bread when the herd gallops past her home. After a week of jelly bread, Satchi feels secure in tying a rope around Little Star’s neck, but he rebels. Little Star runs off, and the next day he is not with the herd. Has she frightened him away, or is something wrong?

Satchi and Little Star was written by Donna Marie Seim (author of another delightful island story, the tween novel Hurricane Mia), and handsomely illustrated by Susan Spellman. It gently shares a message about the inhabitants of this planet, and their right to live the life they were born to live, and introduces children to another way of life.