Pony on the Twelfth Floor by Polly Faber, illustrated by Sarah Jennings

2018   

There is almost a fantasy element in this; Kizzy finds a lost pony in a supermarket and manages to hide him in her twelfth floor apartment. Later he is hidden in a friend’s garden shed and later on the balcony of another flat.  Eventually Kizzy has to return him to his rightful owner but she is mistaken about who that is.  In fact Flapjack aka Pumpkin was on the way to a new home when he escaped.  The new home is a good one; the Under Arches Farm is a city farm and not far from where Kizzy lives.

The cast is diverse. He friend Pawel is Polish. The manager of the bock of flats, where Kizzy lives with her mother and brother, keeps bees on the roof. Miss Turney, an older resident, is a hoarder. This means she has a saddle for Kizzy.  And it is she that hides Flapjack on her balcony for a while.

The text is ragged right and double spaced so aids the reader though the font has a serif and difficult ‘a’s and ‘g’s.  The book is 256 pages long.  There are plenty of illustrations: full pages, inserted into pages and at the beginning of the chapters.  They both illustrate and tell more of the story.