‘Big Guy’ Wins Pinnacle Award, Called ‘Genuinely Sweet’

Big Guy: A School Horse Story received two new honors. It won a Pinnacle Achievement Award as best book in the category of animals and pets, and The Book Revue gave it five stars, praising it as “uplifting, funny, and genuinely sweet.” Congratulations to author Celia Ryker!

The reviewer writes: “Told entirely from Big Guy's point of view, the book works beautifully because Ryker never condescends to her readers or to her subject. The horse voices are distinct and funny and genuinely wise, and the observations Big Guy makes about his new world carry the kind of earned insight that only comes from a writer who has spent years thinking about how horses actually experience their lives. Shorty, Kaiser, and Slippy are supporting characters worth meeting, and Little Lisa, the smallest rider with the biggest heart, arrives in the story at exactly the right moment…. Ryker is working in that same tradition of animal fiction that uses a non-human protagonist to illuminate something deeply human about belonging, change, and the friendships that outlast the circumstances that created them.”

Read the full review here.