书名：The Red Pony 小红马
难度：Lexile蓝思阅读指数810L
作者：John Steinbeck
出版社名称：Penguin
出版时间：2016
语种：英文 
ISBN：9780141368962
商品尺寸：12.9 x 0.8 x 19.8 cm
包装：平装
页数：136 （以实物为准）

The Red Pony《小红马》是诺贝尔文学奖约翰·斯坦贝克广为流传的作品。书中的主人公乔迪，长大中的男孩，带着迷惘，带着好奇，带着淡淡忧伤，但他依然向往遥远的他方，期待成长的荣光。

精彩书评：
“斯坦贝克的这组有关一个男孩的故事虽然只是薄薄的一本书，但从其深邃的寓意来看，它却恰似一桥架在两山之间——男孩在少年与青年之间的门槛前经历了一件件痛苦的甚至可以说受到了伤害的事情。它不仅使作者跻身于美国主要小说家之列，而且明显地促进了20世纪中叶文学流派的发展，为表现少儿天地的小说剑作开拓了一个全新的发展领域。”——美国著名文学评论家：约翰·西利

“这是一个小男孩的故事。也是一匹小马的故事。这个故事里还有老人还有老马。一个老人总爱讲从前的故事，讲从前的光荣和穿越，他讲啊讲啊，没有哪个大人再愿意听了，可是这个小孩愿意听。他为什么愿意听呢？因为他是一个小孩，一个小孩会很向往未来的穿越和光荣。”——著名儿童文学作家：梅子涵
Written at a time of profound anxiety caused by the illness of his mother, Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck draws on his memories of childhood in these stories about a boy who embodies both the rebellious spirit and the contradictory desire for acceptance of early adolescence. Unlike most coming-of-age stories, the cycle does not end with a hero “matured” by circumstances. As John Seelye writes in his introduction, reversing common interpretations, The Red Pony is imbued with a sense of loss. Jody’s encounters with birth and death express a common theme in Steinbeck’s fiction: They are parts of the ongoing process of life, “resolving” nothing. The Red Pony was central not only to Steinbeck’s emergence as a major American novelist but to the shaping of a distinctly mid twentieth-century genre, opening up a new range of possibilities about the fictional presence of a child’s world.

The Red Pony《小红马》讲述的是小男孩乔迪的四个故事。第1个故事：男孩乔迪十岁那年得到了父亲送他的礼物——一匹小红马，他和小红马之间产生深厚的感情，不料，一次意外使小红马不幸夭折，乔迪非常伤心；第二个故事：乔迪一直好奇又迷惑的牧场对面的大山里来了一个神秘的老人，老人后来骑走了他家的老马……；第三个故事：父亲把一匹母马交给乔迪，在母马生小马驹的时候，为保住小马驹，母马被大人杀死；第四个故事是乔迪和外公的交往。四个故事独立成篇，都对乔迪的成长有重大的影响。
作品写实，充满了少年成长时期的淡淡的伤感，叙诉了许多少年的向往和迷惑，描绘了浓浓的乡村气息。
when ten-year-old Jody is given a pony by his father, he is thrilled. Beautiful red colt Gabilan is a source of great joy for this proud young owner. But owning a pony also teaches Jody some very tough lessons about responsibility and growing up.

约翰·斯坦贝克（John Steinbeck，1902-1968），美国著名作家，其作品深爱受读者喜爱。1962年，斯坦贝克因为“现实主义的、富于想象的创作”以及“富于同情的幽默和对社会的敏感观察”被授予诺贝尔文学奖。代表作有长篇小说《愤怒的葡萄》，中篇小说《人鼠之间》、《煎饼坪》及《小红马》等。
John Steinbeck (1902-68) is remembered as one of the greatest and best-loved American writers of the twentieth century. During the 1930s, his works included The Red Pony, Pastures of Heaven, Tortilla Flat, In Dubious Battle, and Of Mice and Men. The Grapes of Wrath, published in 1939, earned him a Pulitzer Prize. In 1962, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

The Gift礼物
The Great Mountains崇山峻岭
The Promise诺言
The Leader of the People众人的首领

At daybreak Billy Buck emerged from the bunkhouse and stood for a moment on the porch looking up at the sky. He was a broad, bandy-legged little man with a walrus mustache, with square hands, puffed and muscled on the palms. His eyes were a contemplative, watery gray and the hair, which protruded from under his Stetson hat was spiky and weathered. Billy was still stuffing his shirt into his blue jeans as he stood on the porch. He unbuckled his belt and tightened it again. The belt showed, by the worn shiny places opposite each hole, the gradual increase of Billy's middle over a period of years. When he had seen to the weather, Billy cleared each nostril by holding its mate closed with his forefinger and blowing fiercely. Then he walked down to the barn, rubbing his hands together. He curried and brushed two saddle horses in the stalls, talking quietly to them all the time; and he had hardly finished when the iron triangle started ringing at the
ranch house. Billy stuck the brush and currycomb together and laid them on the rail and went up to breakfast. His action had been so deliberate and yet so wasteless of time that he came to the house while Mrs. Tiflin was still ringing the triangle. She nodded her gray head to him and withdrew into the kitchen. Billy Buck sat down on the steps, because he was a cowhand, and
it wouldn't be fitting that he should go first into the dining-room. He heard Mr. Tiflin in the house, stamping his feet into his boots.
The high jangling note of the triangle put the boy Jody in motion. He was only a little boy, ten years old, with hair like dusty yellow grass and with shy polite gray eyes, and with a mouth that worked when he thought. The triangle picked him up out of sleep. It didn't occur to him to disobey the harsh note. He never had: no one he knew ever had. He brushed the tangled hair out of his eyes and skinned his nightgown off. In a moment he was dressed--blue chambray shirt and overalls. It was late in the summer, so of course there were no shoes to bother with. In the kitchen he waited
until his mother got from in front of the sink and went back to the stove. Then he washed himself and brushed back his hair.
"I've got to cut your hair before long," his mother said. "Breakfasts on the table. Go on in, so Billy can come.
Jody sat at the long table, which was covered with white oilcloth washed through to the fabric in some places. The fried eggs lay in rows on their platter. Jody took three eggs on his plate and followed with three thick slices of crisp bacon. He carefully scraped a spot of blood from one of the egg yolks.
Billy Buck clumped in. "That wont hurt you," Billy explained. "That's only a sign the rooster leaves."