Step into the captivating world of Show Strides, where two young horseback riders, Tally and Mac, learn important lessons at the Quince Oaks stables, related to making new friends, confidence, family struggles, and discovering who they are. Tally, a diligent riding student refining her skills with the stable's school horses, meets Mac, a new girl with big ambitions.As both girls navigate the exciting world of equestrian competition and work toward their own goals, they will learn more about each other, themselves, and what it takes to chase their dreams. A fresh and modern take on equestrian stories, Show Strides immerses readers ages 9-12 with a passion for horses in the thrilling world of riding, horsemanship, and the special connections formed with animal friends and fellow horse enthusiasts. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.   CHAPTER 1   Something inside the bright blue grooming box caught Tally’s eye. Tucked in between a rubber currycomb and a hoof pick was a sheet of lined paper with a note scribbled on it in marker.   That’s weird, Tally thought. Why would someone at the barn write to me? She bent down to pick up the paper, her new tall boots cutting into the back of her knees. Tally winced—a couple of her older barn friends had talked about how painful it can be to break in new tall boots, but she thought they were being a little overdramatic. Until now.   She unfolded the piece of notebook paper to find the following written inside in black Sharpie:  HARD WORK BEATS TALENT WHEN TALENT DOESN’T WORK HARD.   Dad, she thought immediately. No one else she knew would write in all capital letters like that. Plus, her dad was super proud of how much work she put into her riding. He was always sharing things he’d read about sports and athletes, encouraging her to follow their lead. “Tally up the ribbons!” he liked to say about horse shows. It was a cheesy play on her nickname (everyone had called her Tally—short for Natalia—for as long as she could remember), but she secretly loved when he said it. Who didn’t love horse show ribbons? She scanned the paper again, the words blending together a bit in front of her eyes. Was her father trying to say she had talent or worked hard? Both? Not enough of either?                 “Tally Hart!” A loud voice broke the silence of the tack room and startled Tally so much that she popped straight up, bumping her head on one of the school sad-dles mounted on the wall rack above her. In the doorway to the tack room, her instructor, Meg, laughed. Tally felt her cheeks turn red.   “Hey, I want to talk to you about the show coming up,” said Meg.   “The show on the twenty-fourth, right? My parents are dropping me off for the whole day,” Tally said of the barn’s upcoming schooling show, the fourth in a series of six. At the end of the series there would be an awards banquet and, rumor had it, superlong and fancy ribbons—longer than champion and reserve ribbons, even—awarded to first through sixth place for cumulative points over the show series. In two of the shows so far, Tally had gotten to ride Sweet Talker, a little chest-nut Thoroughbred cross in her barn’s lesson program. She’d never ridden in a series before. “Great,” Meg said. “Keep going with the hunter division you’ve been doing, but I also want you to do the medal class with Sweetie. I think you’re ready.” Tally felt her heart thud excitedly in her chest.   She’d watched the Quince Oaks junior equitation medal class at the last show and thought it looked like a blast. Equitation courses were always more complicated, so this felt like a good step up. This particular course featured a rollback turn and a trot jump—a much more sophisticated course than the usual outside-diagonal-outside-diagonal pattern of the hunter trips.   “Sign up for that one too when you register, okay?” Meg reached for the buzzing phone in a pocket of her jeans.   “Thank you, Meg!” Tally called after her. Her instructor gave her a thumbs-up as she walked down the aisle, already talking on her phone, and Tally felt that familiar swell of pride.   Tally practically skipped out of the tack room to go celebrate the good news with Sweetie. Quince Oaks (or Oaks for short, as the riders called it) was situated at the end of a long gravel driveway off a windy, woodsy road. The Oaks barn was shaped like a horseshoe—the right side was reserved for the lesson program, which housed nearly thirty school horses in stalls on either side of the aisle, with a tack room on the open end by the barn entrance and parking lot. The left side of the barn was designated for the fifteen boarders’ horses (the stalls were slightly bigger on the boarder side), and in the middle of the horseshoe was one of the farm’s two indoor rings that everyone shared. From the parking lot, you looked directly into that small indoor when the doors were pushed open on their tracks. The top of the barn that curved around the indoor ring had a