Leroy Ninker Saddles Up (2024)

It is no secret that I am a huge fan of Kate DiCamillo, so, wanting a break this weekend, I went through three volumes of Tales from Deckawoo Drive, her amazing series featuring a cast of repeat characters and one porcine wonder.

As usual, DiCamillo did not disappoint, having me smiling from ear to ear in no time.

This volume centers around Leroy Ninker, a rehabilitated convict who dreams of being a cowboy. When a coworker suggests that every cowboy needs a horse, Leroy sets to get himself one. But as with all things on Deckawoo drive, nothing is ever simple, and never is ever complete without a stack of extra buttered toast.

Wonderfully illustrated, witty, and cleverly written in a language that also enriches the vocabulary, this book is sure to bring a smile to our face as you read aloud (hopefully) with a younger reader by your side.

I expected a cute story when I started this, and I wasn't disappointed. Leroy Ninker Saddles Up tells the story of a man and his horse, with plenty of beautiful words (which is appropriate, since Maybelline the horse loves beautiful words so much). After Leroy brings Maybelline back to his apartment, he realizes she won't fit through the front door. Later that night, there's a storm, and as Leroy goes to fetch an umbrella, Maybelline gets scared and runs away. Then it's up to Leroy to find his horse. The search leads him to Deckawoo Drive, where Mercy and the Watsons make cameos.

I like the story for the most part, except for one small thing: the problem of Maybelline not fitting through Leroy's front door is never addressed. Yes, Mrs. Watson makes a comment about how there's always a way to make things fit, but that's about much resolution as that plot point gets, and it leaves me wondering how the same thing (Maybelline freaking out and running away after being left outside) won't happen again... repeatedly.

Other than that, though, the writing is strong and intelligent, just the way I've come to expect from DiCamillo. The illustrations are nice, too, although I'm a bit disappointed they aren't in full colour like the ones in the Mercy Watson books. Overall, this is a strong chapter book for young readers (and it's not so juvenile that older readers can't enjoy it, too).

Quotable moment:

"You are the most splendiferous horse in all of creation," he said.
Maybelline whinnied long and loud. She nodded in agreement.
She truly was an excellent horse.
Leroy didn't think he would ever be done admiring her.

Perhaps this book is meant as a stepping stone to bigger chapter books, which makes it okay. Leroy Ninker is apparently a spin-off from the popular Mercy Watson pig stories. He really wants a horse and has to learn that horses are a lot of work. Maybelline (the horse) is too big to fit in Leroy's apartment and will eat him out of house and home. She also won't behave until she's been complimented. Fortunately, compliments are something that Leroy can handle.
But I don't know where he's going to keep that horse.
It's almost as though this is a part of a larger novel that DiCamillo has broken up and is publishing one chapter at a time. Leroy wants a horse, gets a horse, loses his horse, then finds her. I don't get the sense that he has learned anything or that there has been a climax and denouement.
A kid would probably enjoy this because a kid doesn't have the sense of practicality I do. Horses need fields and a barn, a huge source of water, and lots to eat. They can't just stand around outside an apartment door all night, and owners can't sleep out there on concrete with them. And the other tenants would complain that a horse was taking up their parking place.
I'm just told old to enjoy myself, aren't I?

Leroy Ninker, the reformed thief and would-be cowboy who first appeared in Mercy Watson Fights Crime, the third in Kate DiCamillo's early chapter-book series about an unusual pig, returns in his own adventure here, launching a new series, Tales from Deckawoo Drive. Still hoping to be a cowboy, Leroy sets out to obtain a horse, eventually finding himself the proud owner of an older equine named Maybelline. But when he forgets that his new companion doesn't like to be left alone - especially in thunder storms! - it looks like he will lose her. Or will he...?

This being a Kate DiCamillo story, there's never much doubt that matters will end well, but fans of Mercy Watson will still enjoy watching Leroy find his happy ending. The reading level here is a step up from the Mercy Watson books, making it the perfect next stage for children who have read those adventures and are looking for more. Just as with the earlier series, the artwork here is provided by Chris Van Dusen, although sadly it is in black and white. I thought this was rather a shame, as part of the appeal of Mercy Watson is the vibrantly colorful vintage-feeling artwork. Still,

Yippie-i-oh! Horse of my heart! I have missed you so.

I love the cover, don't you? OH so cute and colorful. I did want to point out or at least take notice, Leroy use to be a thief? Why would that bit of information be necessary for a children's book? That said, I liked Leroy, the little scamp!

Mrs. Watson, Maybelline, and Stella also star in this little book. Stella is a little girl and Mrs. Watson and Maybelline are more MATURE, one being a lady and one being a lady horse who requires a great deal of attention (sounds spoiled to me) but she loves Leroy. Happy horse, happy ... horse? It really didn't go anywhere, but it was cute... It is sort of the get more with honey thing.

This book is the right length to read out loud to kids, so a great choice for classes or night time reading. It has a cast of characters so it lends itself to lots of voices and attitudes. I thought it was very cute and it made me smile.

Happy Reading!

“What you have to do here is take fate in your hands and wrestle it to the ground.”

Leroy wants to be a cowboy like the ones he sees in the movies. He has a hat, boots and a lasso. Beatrice informs him that to be a cowboy, he needs a horse. So Leroy goes in search of a horse to make himself complete. He doesn't realize just how accurate that is. When he finds Maybelline, he “... noticed that the world was different from on top of a horse. The colors were deeper. The sun shined brighter. The birds sang more sweetly.”

Maybelline is "the kind of a horse that enjoys the heck out of a compliment. You gotta talk sweet to Maybelline." She also eats a lot of grub and gets lonesome quick. As Leroy learns how to best take care of Maybelline, they begin to bond. "Had his heart been waiting for Maybelline to come along so that it would open wide and he could speak all the beautiful words that had been hiding inside of him?"

But when a storm separates the two, Leroy goes out in search of her, bootless, hatless and lassoless. He never felt less like a cowboy. But that doesn't matter anymore. He just cares about finding his friend.
Dag blibber it!

“Listen to the people of the world when they give you informational bits.” Kate DiCamillo, like Leroy, is "very good at poeticals." Sometimes life doesn't give us what we expect to get, but it's how you react to that that makes you who you are.

I know to expect greatness from Kate DiCamillo. Name any major prize for children's fiction in the U.S. and she's probably won it, sometimes more than once (as in the case of the biggest annual award of all, the John Newbery Medal). Kate DiCamillo's novels lack for nothing, full of characters exhibiting tremendous courage at seminal moments, moments that poignantly transfer over to our own life experiences as we consider what to make of them in the revealing light of great literature. The loveliness of Kate DiCamillo's language leaves a soft, dull ache in one's heart, as does the emotional entanglements of her assortment of characters, united and separated by the passage of time, and sometimes united again when they most desperately need each other's healing touch. These beautiful story elements are to be expected from classic Kate DiCamillo novels such as The Tale of Despereaux, Flora & Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures, Because of Winn-Dixie, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, and The Magician's Elephant. Ms. DiCamillo has come through with excellence in her writing so consistently, there's no surprise left when she does it yet again, but I must admit I didn't see Leroy Ninker Saddles Up coming. The story is everything one could hope for from Kate DiCamillo, a soothing hand where sadness and hurt lie buried deepest, nourishing and understanding words spoken where they are painfully needed. Less than half as long as The Tale of Despereaux, Leroy Ninker Saddles Up is all the reassurance and wisdom our souls crave most, equally accessible and fit for appreciation by the youngest or oldest readers. It is, indeed, something special.

Little Leroy Ninker, an aspiring cowboy working to make ends meet at the local drive-in movie theater, gets some good advice when his friend Beatrice tells him there's more to becoming a cowboy than standing around dreaming of the day everything comes together to grant the wish. Every cowboy worth his salt needs a horse underneath him, and that's as good a place as any for Leroy to start. When a notice in the newspaper describes a horse for sale at a cheap price, Leroy takes Beatrice's advice and follows up on the advertisem*nt. The sale is legit, only the horse isn't quite what Leroy pictured when he fantasized about the magnificent mount he would soon attain. The horse being offered Leroy is an elderly nag, still able to move at respectable speed, though not capable of getting around the way she did in her younger days. But Maybelline is a living, trotting horse, a necessity for anyone desiring to travel the open range like a true cowboy, and Leroy can't help but agree to the transaction that will make this horse his.

Armed with the three rules regarding Maybelline that her former owner imparts to Leroy before the sale (she needs to be sweet-talked, she eats a lot, and she mustn't be left alone), Leroy gallops happily around on his brand-new steed, overjoyed at looking like a real cowboy. When the two of them settle down for the night outside Leroy's small apartment, Leroy maintaining a river of complimentary comments to keep Maybelline relaxed and content, the miniature cowboy begins to seriously think about how much the sudden acquisition of this horse has brought to his life, what deep needs her presence has filled. "I have made a lot of mistakes in my life," he tells Maybelline quietly, outside under the starry skies. "I have done some things that I wish I had not done. I have taken some wrong turns." Pint-sized Leroy Ninker doesn't take for granted the aging horse of which he is so profoundly proud; he can't take her for granted, not after all the struggles he's gone through to get to the point in his life where he could actually be a decent companion for someone like Maybelline. Leroy once was a thief, swiping property that didn't belong to him, more desperado than gallant cowboy, and he doesn't ever want to go back to that life. Why live outside the law, suspicious of everyone and never being able to let a single soul get close to him, when he already has so much better than that in this one dusty old horse? Leroy is a result of the choices in his life calculated together toward an end product, and somehow that product is a positive one. A new life has begun for the former outlaw.

But when the horse of his heart, who shines "brighter than every star and every planet", loses her way in the cold wilderness outside Leroy's apartment, the diminutive cowboy's debut into authentic cowboy-hood—and everything else he has done to turn his life around—may be in jeopardy. Under the flashes of lightning and the soaking rain, where menace looms large in the mind of a frightened horse feeling consumed by the darkness lurking every which way, fearful that the heartfelt words spoken so gently by her new cowboy friend were nothing but mere words, it's easy to get more and more lost. It's easy to keep making wrong turns and straying further and further from the road that could lead home; the road that, if taken, could prove the affections of a certain tiny vaquero are much, much more than the kind words that represent them. A cowboy with a heart full of love to give, having long waited for a worthy recipient, and the horse who so badly needs to hear the expressions of that love, are destined to reunite in the comfort of their shared bond. A true cowboy like Leroy Ninker? Oh, he'd never give up on "the most splendiferous horse in all of creation", no matter how long it took to track her down. And Maybelline? Well, she's about to find out that pretty sentiments can run awfully deep, and when you have a friend like Leroy, you'd best cling to him real tight. Once you've shared a connection that close, it's the only way to live, isn't it?

For a short chapter book, Leroy Ninker Saddles Up sure handles a wide range of emotions astutely, a calling card of the legendary Kate DiCamillo. Like many readers imagining little Leroy hunkered down on a sleek steed, blowing by other would-be cowboys and demonstrating himself to be the coolest bronco-buster in town, I wasn't sure at first about Maybelline. She's a bit worn down, long in the tooth, and not the handsomest physical specimen. For a cowboy with a lot to prove to himself and others as to whether he should be taken seriously, a horse like Maybelline seems a less than ideal starting point. She requires a lot of maintenance, too; not only does Maybelline eat more than most horses, but she needs a constant stream of verbal niceties if she's to be kept calm, and that's harder work than one might think. But midway through the story it becomes obvious that Leroy needs to give those compliments every bit as much as Maybelline needs to hear them, and I think that is the moment we first understand how perfect a match horse and rider are for one another. From page forty-nine: "Had his heart been waiting for Maybelline to come along so that it could open wide and he could speak all the beautiful words that had been hiding inside of him?" The thought moved me in a big way when I read it, for I know exactly how it felt to be Leroy right then. Inside so many of us, our hearts are logjams of love desperately needing release, but without a suitable individual on whom to bestow that love, how can it ever be satisfyingly channeled? The many compliments Leroy gives Maybelline are more than a comical obedience to the demands of the pushy girl who sold the horse to him: they're a luminous declaration of everything Maybelline has already become to Leroy, the special individual on whom he can confer his most abiding affections after waiting so long for the chance. We all need a Maybelline in our life to huggle up next to, trade tender words with, and let them know, with everything we've got, that we're grateful we have them and there's nothing we wouldn't do for them. As nice as looking like a bona fide cowboy is, which has been Leroy Ninker's dream forever, it's nothing compared to having Maybelline. And it appears the excitement on Deckawoo Drive is just going to continue from here, with additional entries to come in the series.

How can I sufficiently praise this book? I'm not sure I can. To be so emotionally rewarded by a story that takes a matter of minutes to finish is an unexpected fulfillment, but it's what Kate DiCamillo does. Children's literature may never have had a better friend than her, and she sure is good to her young readers. Leroy Ninker Saddles Up has whetted my appetite for other books in the Tales from Deckawoo Drive series, and if they come close to matching the comprehensive literary value of this first installment, then we're in for one of the finest series of its kind in all of American children's storytelling. I love Leroy Ninker Saddles Up, and unabashedly recommend it. One rarely finds a book this length that is so deep and so, so good.