Stanfordville author debuts children’s book inspired by real-life horse

Karen Belove, of Stanfordville, said her first children’s book wrote itself one day after more than a decade of thinking about it.

Belove’s debut book, “Cotton Candy Sally Finds a Home,” is a heartfelt tale about the trials of youth and horse training. It follows Cotton Candy Sally, a horse born in Iowa and later sold to a facility in New York City, and a young girl named Kara as she navigates adolescence and the death of a parent.

The book was inspired by the real-life story of Belove’s first horse, a quarter horse from Iowa also named Cotton Candy Sally, that ended up at a facility in Queens, New York, after its owners sold it.

That horse set Belove down a lifelong path deeper into the equestrian world.

“I really loved the horses,” Belove said. “It was slowly taking over my life, though I didn’t realize it.”

While horses were becoming an increasingly central part of her life, Belove cut her teeth at advertising agencies in New York City. She wrote ad copy every day, an occupation she said both helped and hurt her while writing her first book.

“It was a little bit of a detriment because it’s such a different kind of writing,” Belove said. “I had to forget about the exclamation marks.”

Even so, Belove said she paid special attention to the book’s prose. Children, especially those in their preteen years, are complex, and she wanted to honor that complexity in both the content and the composition.

Her book is character-driven, Belove said, because those were the narratives she remembers resonating with her most as a young reader. A favorite was Beverly Cleary’s “Beezus and Ramona.”

“I told my mother then, ‘When I grow up, I’m going to write stories like “Beezus and Ramona,’” Belove said.

She credits her parents’ support for her career in writing. Though they were not artists themselves, they encouraged Belove and her sister to pursue creative interests. That encouragement, Belove said, led her to become a writer and her sister a painter.

“I can still remember the first thing I ever wrote,” Belove said. “It was a poem about my cat.”

Her childhood cat had escaped from the family’s home in suburban Westchester County. To process the loss, Belove wrote a poem and showed it to her mother, who insisted she bring it to school the next day to show her teacher.

“My mother kept it,” Belove said. “I still have it.”

Belove was close with her parents, so the sudden death of her father at age 56 sent her on a search for joy that eventually led her to Cotton Candy Sally, an experience she said is reflected in her book.

These real-life experiences are meant to give young readers an engaging, empowering and educational narrative, Belove said, because the complexities of real life are unavoidable.

“Life enables me to write the kind of book I want to write,” Belove said. “Children are complex. They’re really trying to navigate a world they have no experience navigating.”

Belove self-published “Cotton Candy Sally Finds a Home.” More information about purchasing the book is available at sallyhorsechronicles.com.