Little girls. Fat hairy ponies. Hook-nosed riding teachers, riders on
backward, and horses gone madly off course. The artist Norman Thelwell
published his first pony cartoon in 1953, and quite by accident, his
name became synonymous with these kinds of images. "The response was
instantaneous," he wrote in his autobiography. "Suddenly I had fan
mail...I dreamed up some more horsey ideas and people went into
raptures." The "Thelwell pony" soon became the most-often referenced
source of horse-humor the world over. In 1957, Thelwell's first
collection of pony cartoons, Angels on Horseback, was published,
followed by A Leg at Each Corner in '61, and Riding Academy in '63.
In this Anniversary Special Collection, readers get all three classics,
featuring page after page of Thelwell's hilarious cartoons along with
his often blisteringly accurate advice for survival in and around the
equine herd. Whether audiences open Pony Calvacade out of nostalgia or
curiosity, the delightful details of Thelwell's illustrations and
timeless wit of his caricatures and asides are a surefire way to change
a day for the better, and certain to send a new generation of
fat-hairy-pony-lovers out to the barn to test the truths within.