By Gordon Brown
Lawrence Today magazine, Spring 2003
Children's book author Bonnie Bryant Hiller, '68, was sitting in a theatre on a Saturday afternoon, waiting for a movie to begin, when a father and daughter came in and sat in front of her.
"The girl pulled out a book," Hiller recalls, "and I could see it was one of mine. When the lights dimmed to show the previews, she leaned forward and held the book toward the screen so the reflected light would shine on her book and she could continue reading. That was a magical moment. She'll never know what she did for me."
After graduating from Lawrence with an English major, Hiller completed the six-week Radcliffe College Publishing Procedures course, now offered by Columbia University and still a highly regarded conduit into jobs in the publishing industry. She worked for a children's book agent for six years, had a child and was out of the business world for a year, and then joined Scholastic, Inc., as director of rights and permissions.
The first book in her popular series The Saddle Club was published in 1988. Subsequent Saddle Club books and two spin-off series, Pony Tales and Pine Hollow, now total 144 titles, translated into eight languages, with over 8 million copies in print. A "Saddle Club" television series is the most popular children's TV show in Australia, where it is produced; has been well-received in Canada; and now is available in the United States, via the Discovery Kids cable network.
Saddle Club and its siblings are published under the name Bonnie Bryant. She also writes in other genres, including movie novelizations, under the name B. B. Hiller.
Readers of The Saddle Club books are girls between eight and 12 years old, rather sophisticated, and very enthusiastic, Hiller says. They love horses and stories about horses and the friendship that is evident between the three girls who are the principal characters in the series.
"If you ask one of those readers what my books are about," the author says, "they'll tell you they are about horses — but the fact is, they're about friendship.
"My stories are character-driven, and the kids resolve the story. They are deeply about friendship, loyalty, fairness, and trust, and they tend to have fairly strong moral values, without being moral tales."
When her characters moved from the printed page to the small screen, their creator was right there with them.
"The television producers ask me to read and comment on the scripts, and sometimes I have objections to storylines. I've told an awful lot of stories in my life, and I know when a story works and when it doesn't work, when it's consistent and logical and when it's not. Sometimes the screenwriters get off on the wrong foot and tell the wrong story, and I try to help redirect them. Sometimes they actually listen to what I say, and sometimes I think they're actually grateful.
"For one thing, I am adamant about not having my characters speak substandard English. They can speak casual English, and they can use common teen phrases or fragmented sentences as one would in speaking, but they are not going to say, 'Me and Johnny are going down to the store.' There's no good reason for a character to talk that way."
Overall, she approves of the adaptations, saying that "the television episodes are well-done, they've got good production values, and the kids seem to respond to them. Although they're not straight out of my books, they're respectful of my characters and of the kinds of stories I was telling. I would be thrilled if they were exactly like my books, but that might not make a very good television show; they are different mediums and require different things."
From long and close acquaintance with the topic, Hiller is able to draw some conclusions about girls and horses — and boys and horses — and why the sport of horseback riding has so much appeal to young readers.
"Kids spend a lot of time being told what to do and when and how to do it. I think it's very satisfying for them to be able to get into the saddle on top of a very large animal, who is cute and responsive and furry and warm and to tell it what to do and it does what you tell it.
"Girls also love all the stuff that goes with it; they like the tack, they like the costumes that they wear — it's a dress-up opportunity in that sense. Boys at the same age get frustrated with all the detail; they just want to get on the back of the horse and go fast. Girls have the patience to deal with the specifics, especially of English riding, which is largely what my books are about. Western riding has a little bit more boy-appeal.
"Those are really broad generalizations about boys and girls, but my child-psychologist cousin tells me they're true."
As the boys and girls grow up, she notes, horseback riding is the one sport in which men and women compete on an equal basis.
Back at the beginning, at Lawrence, she recalls a classroom moment that may have foreshadowed her eventual career.
"I remember a course I took from Ben Schneider [professor emeritus of English], in which I had to work very, very hard. One day he asked a complex question, and somebody gave a very convoluted answer. It took me awhile to absorb the question, let alone the answer. I raised my hand and said, 'Are you saying. . . ?' and I restated it in a far simpler form.
"Professor Schneider said, 'Yes, but, Miss Bryant, why must you always reduce everything to the simplest possible terms?'
"Was that what started me on the road to becoming a children's book writer? I don't know."
Sidebar: Other Lawrence children's authors