Wild Girl Book

A contemporary and irresistible story from Patricia Reilly Giff

Lidie lives in Jales, Brazil, where she s free to ride, to be a wild girl, and to dream of going to live with her father and older brother, Rafael, in New York City. Finally Lidie is 12 time to leave Brazil for New York.

Meanwhile, a filly is born and begins her journey to a new home. As Lidie s story unfolds, so does the filly s.

Lidie s father runs a stable at a famous race track, and Rafael is training to be a jockey. As much as they want to make Lidie feel welcome, they still think of her as the little girl they left behind. They don t even know what a strong rider she is, and that she s determined to befriend and ride the wild filly her father has just bought: Wild Girl.


From the Hardcover edition.

Publishers Weekly

In this tender if occasionally overdramatic novel, two-time Newbery Honor author Giff (Lily’s Crossing; Pictures of Hollis Woods) relates the analogous stories of a 12-year-old girl and a filly. Lidie moves from Brazil to New York to join her brother and horse trainer father, who had left their homeland years earlier. She knows little English, misses the horse she loved to ride and is angry that her well-meaning father and brother still treat her like a little girl (“They didn’t know me, not at all”). Lidie immediately bonds with Wild Girl, her father’s new horse, which she observes “had been born in the warmth of the South... and brought here to this cold world, just as I had.” There’s little subtlety in the parallels Giff draws between the two: Lidie’s late mother had called her “my wild girl” and, sensing the filly is lonesome, she thinks, “I knew how that was.” Yet readers will find Lidie a strong protagonist, her difficulty in adjusting to her new life credible and her eventual feeling of belonging—she finally feels at home when riding Wild Girl for the first time—gratifying. Ages 8–12. (Aug.)