Willow Bend Publishing was established in 2001 to promote this fun, best-selling Morgan Horse Series. With well over 50,000 copies sold to date, the books continue to grow in popularity. Amazingly, every book has won at least one national award, including twi winning the prestigious Children's Choices award cosponsored by The International Reading Association and The  Children's Book Council. Over 10,000 kids voted the Morgan Horse Series books among their all-time favorites when selecting the winners for the Children's Choices award.

For your information, background and biographical information for the author and illustrator is given under the book links.

About the Author

Award-winning author Ellen Feld began her career in a field far removed from horses. Receiving a B.A. from the University of Massachusetts with a double major of Russian and Soviet and Eastern European Studies, Ms. Feld continued her studies with graduate work at Georgetown University where she focused on Russian Studies. After a brief stint working for a US Senator in Washington, DC, Ms. Feld realized she missed her childhood home and returned to rural Massachusetts.

Back home, Ms. Feld resumed her first passion: horses. It was at the stable that she learned the importance of discipline and being dedicated to one's sport. In addition to the hard work, Ms. Feld also learned to appreciate the various personalities and quirks of individual horses. While working with horses was not new to her (she had been competing at Morgan Horse shows since she was a child), her skills matured and her love of Morgans grew. As an adult, Ms. Feld's repertoire included saddleseat, reining, hunter pleasure, driving, barrel racing, and western pleasure. With her gelding Rusty, Ms. Feld won the New England Morgan Horse Association High-Point Trail Award for five consecutive years. Ms. Feld has owned numerous equines of other breeds including Morabs, Appaloosas, Quarter Horses, and Miniature Horses.

Ms. Feld began writing about horses more than twenty years ago. At first, she wrote for small, regional publications, but within a few short years her work began to appear regularly in large, national publications. Her articles have appeared in publications such as The Morgan Horse, Stable Management, Equestrian, Young Rider, Just About Horses, Horsemen's Yankee Pedlar, Tri-State Horse, and The Appaloosa Journal.

About the Illustrator

Jeanne Mellin, equine artist, works in the English tradition of Herring, Stubbs and Munnings. Her paintings, prints, and bronzes of horses are clearly linked to the tradition of realistic animal paintings of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Like many of the earlier English painters, Mellin's work often combines formalist composition with emotional intensity. Each of her animals is an individual in its own right. As Mellin says, "I create the animal so that it will look as if it will move an ear, lift a foot."

Mellin's long and intense relationship with horses as a breeder, trainer and judge gives her a unique insight into the individual personalities of her subjects, no matter what their breed or discipline. Her practical experience, her formal training at Rhode Island School of Design, and her frequent painting trips to England have made her a remarkably successful equine portraitist.

Art by Jeanne Mellin has been exhibited in England at the Tryon Gallery (London), the Kaiser Gallery (Cirencester), and the Cleveland Gallery (Bath). In the United States her work has been exhibited at Saratoga, The Kentucky Horse Park, and at the American Morgan Horse Institute (Shelburne, VT). In 1992 a limited edition of twelve bronzes of the famous Justin Morgan sold out before being advertised, and in 1990 a bronze of the Dutch Warmblood Preferent Stallion Roemer was cast by Mellin and presented to the Royal Warmblood Studbook of the Netherlands by Roemer's owners. Art by Mellin is owned by some of the most important collectors of equine art in Europe and America today.