Tess is a ten-year-old farm girl who loves freedom and adventure and dreaming. Over four seasons’ time, she and her workhorse companion Star learn from “the school of the wild” as they create a dream home by the sea out of driftwood and castaway treasures. In these moments, Tess’s thoughts of self-doubt disappear, as does her secret unhappiness that she lacks the fine show horses her peers have.
Dreams change and time passes until one day Star discovers his proud draft horse ancestry. In the face of nature’s fury, Tess uses ingenuity and courage together with Star’s spirit and power, to prevail in a heroic rescue. The realization that they are “good enough” just being themselves is profoundly felt as horse and rider are forever changed.  This transformation resonates throughout Carnes’ vivid oil illustrations and leaves readers simultaneously awed and gratified.

With master storyteller Ernest Pugh narrating this timeless story prefaced by the words of John McCutcheon’s song “Like Water From a Another Time” on the accompanying CD, it is clear that author and illustrator Susan K. Carnes has struck gold with My Champion. Indeed, the book won a gold medal in the “Spirit” category from Moonbeams.


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My Champion is available at:      Amazon Books
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The devastating news that the dairy barn on the Wisconsin home farm is       being torn down, shocks Lori, who grew up there. She tries to stop the demolition, and recalls stories of the people and animals that once inhabited that space. When the journal of a World War I veteran is found built into a central beam in the hay loft, she has the key to unlock memories.

The cast of characters live again through the eyes of the soldier struggling to deal with his war damaged mind. Fresh out of family, he is hired to build the barn, and run the dairy. He is solitary and fearful of interaction, but in the cathedral of the barn he finds the courage to matter.