Books like If Wishes Were Horses by Virginia Vail

In *The Wishing Spell*, twin siblings are transported to a world where classic fairy‑tale characters live in unexpected roles—a warrior Red Riding Hood, a hidden Frog Prince, and a pregnant Snow White ruler—while they must navigate perilous lands to reach Snow White’s castle.

A young boy named Alec survives a shipwreck, rescued by a wild black stallion. Together they must trust each other to survive on a deserted island and later compete on the racetrack.

When tragedy forces 12‑year‑old Louisa Mae Cardinal to leave New York City, she finds home, friendship and adventure on her great‑grandmother’s Virginia farm—where the future of her family, the town, and the mountains hangs in a courtroom battle.

When an elderly widower’s car crashes, his fate becomes entangled with a young college student and her cowboy lover, sparking unexpected connections across generations.

After a truck crash leaves her daughter and a horse in pain, a mother journeys to Montana to seek the legendary horse Whisperer, hoping to heal both the animal and herself.

The eighty-Dollar Champion chronicles the remarkable partnership between a Dutch immigrant farmer and his rescued stallion, Snowman, whose triumphs on the American show‑jumping circuit won first prize at Madison Square Garden in the late 1950s.

Alison Chant’s quest for a horse turns into a daring barrel‑racing adventure when she steals Skipper, the prized steed of her friend Kristy, and faces the Angles of courage, friendship, and insurance.

At a summer camp in Kentucky, Jane, an outsider among the wealthy horse‑boarding girls, struggles with a sudden change of ownership for her beloved horse, only to find confidence when she helps train a skittish newcomer.

Twin brothers, Justin and Joey, buy and raise a pony of their own but when the pony foals they find themselves responsible for the care of a whole new pony family.

Monty Roberts is a real life horse whisperer- an American original whose gentle training methods reveal the depth of communication possible between man and animal. He can take a wild, high-strung horse who has never before been handled and persuade that horse to accept a bridle, saddle, and rider in thirty minutes. HIs powers may seem like magic, but his amazing "horse sense" is based on a lifetime of experience. Roberts started riding at the age of two, and at the age of thirteen he went alone into the high deserts of Nevada to study mustangs in the wild. What he learned there changed his life forever. Monty Roberts has spent his whole life working with horses- schooling them, listening to them, and learning their ancient equine language. In The Man Who Listens to Horses, he tells about his early days as a rodeo rider in California, his problems with his violent horse trainer father, who was unwilling to accept Monty's unconventional training methods, his friendship with James Dean, his struggle to be accepted in the professional horse-training community, and the invitation that changed his life- to demonstrate his method of "join-up" to the Queen of England. From his groundbreaking work with horses, Roberts has acquired an unprecedented understanding of nonverbal communication, an understanding that applies to human relationships as well. He has shown that between parent and child, employee and employer (he's worked with over 250 corporations, including General Motors, IBM, Disney, and Merrill Lynch) and abuser and abused, there are forms of communication far stronger than the spoken word and that they are accessible to all who will learn to listen. This inspirational and gentle man, first introduced to the American public on Dateline NBC, is part James Herrior, part Bill Gates, and part John Wayne. And his story is one you will never forget.

Hans, a baker’s son, dreams of riding the famed Lipizzaner stallions of Vienna’s Spanish Riding School, until a chance visit to the Imperial Box during the Ballet of Lipizzaners changes his life.

Racehorse trainer Gail Ruffu’s career spirals when her new owner pushes her to rush a Thoroughbred, Ultreat Envoy, into early competitions, testing her unconventional methods and ethics.

Emily spends a summer at a horse camp where she must protect her beloved horse from the entitled Caro Lescaux.

Savannah works on a Kentucky Derby‑training farm, chasing her dream of becoming a jockey while trying to stay focused amid the owner's son's flirtations.