PBOTD 8th April: Elyne Mitchell: Moon Filly

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This has an oddness; a sense of separation to it that the first Silver Brumby books don't have. It opens with a death, when the mare the stallion has brought back to the herd dies, leaving her tiny filly foal. The book is told from the perspective of the young horses, and the colour of the horses in this book, always important to Elyne Mitchell, is central here. The filly, Ilinga, is the personification of the moon: the colt Wurring is the sun.


Hutchinson, 1st edition, 1968
Moon Filly was always my favourite of the Brumby books: the survival of the two horses against all the landscape and other horses can throw at them is a story that gripped me every time.

Knight paperback, 1975
Moon Filly was first published by Hutchinson in 1968. It appeared in paperback in 1975, published by Knight. It's interesting that Dragon books didn't pick the book up, because it does connect with the Silver Brumby series, which they published. The last printing of the book was as a Lions paperback, available as far as I'm aware in Australia only. It was published in 1992.

Lions paperback, 1992
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For much more on the author and her books, see her page on my website.

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