Literary Oddities: Latawyna, the Naughty Horse Learns to Say "No" to Drugs

Latawyna, the Naughty Horse Learns to Say "No" to Drugs, written by Sylvia Scott Gibson and illustrated by Jeff Mayes, is a rather infamous anti-drugs children's book. Anti-drug books for children tend to be preachy by nature, and are often poorly written, butt this book takes both to entirely new levels, resulting in an unintentionally hilarious experience for those who read it.

The Story

The story begins with a brief poem about how doing drugs is bad, although it barely seems to rhyme and the verses aren't given their own lines, so it's hard to tell whether it's supposed to be a poem.

It then moves on to introducing Latawyna. In a classic case of telling, rather than showing, the book tells us all about Latawyna, who is a naughty horse who imitates other people without thinking about whether the things she does are right or wrong. Perhaps this is supposed to be a commentary on the role peer pressure plays in getting people hooked on drugs, but maybe I'm giving it too much credit.

The book then mentions how Latawyna has seven sisters and one brother. It's worth pointing out that only two of the sisters become relevant(and given their personalities are interchangeable, the story only really needs one), so they may as well have been excised. Then again, having plot-irrelevant siblings is nothing new; Marina from Highway Blossoms is one of nine siblings, and only brings up her siblings in throwaway lines.

The first illustration shows Latawyna trotting past a wooden fence. While horses are sapient creatures, they aren't anthropomorphized at all, unlike characters such as BoJack Horseman, and are surprisingly realistic, unlike the ponies of My Little Pony.

The story begins when Latawyna and two of her sisters, Latoya and Daisy, ask their parents, Sylvia and James horse, whether they can go out and play. This isn't a typo- while "horse" is apparently their surname, it's in lowercase. Sylvia, who is sometimes known as "Mother horse," says yes as long as they get back by sundown so they can do chores. Apparently, Gibson named the horses after her family, but if that's true, I wonder how the real Latawyna feels about the family troublemaker bearing her name.

Latawyna hears a scary noise from the bushes and decides to imitate it. Daisy chides Latawyna, saying their parents taught them to use their own minds, and she "shouldn't do things (she) sees others doing." This is apparently meant to establish that Latawyna is impressionable, but it's rather unsubtle, especially since the narration then follows up on it by saying that Latawyna is "just like the old saying; monkey see, monkey do."

Latawyna's noise scares what is in the bushes away, although it's never shown what made the noise or how it's scary. Then some horses come out- Connie and her sisters, Crystal, Jackie and Angie. They ask to play with Latawyna and her sisters- "a smoking game and a drinking game." I'm well aware of how drinking games work(take a drink whenever something happens), even if I've never taken part in one myself, but I've never heard of smoking games, and I suspect the author is making them up.

Daisy and Latoya refuse, but Connie accepts, leading to the following passage

Connie started smoking drugs and drinking, and Connie's sisters also started smoking drugs and drinking; so when Latawnya, the naughty horse, saw Connie smoking drugs and drinking, Latawnya started smoking drugs and drinking too.

Yes, that's "smoking drugs and drinking" four times in one sentence, three of which are preceded by "started." Here's how I'd rewrite it.

Connie and her sisters started smoking drugs and drinking. After watching them for a while, Latawyna decided to join in, too.

It's not exceptional, but it gets the point across at the target audience's reading level..

Incidentally, the "drugs" being smoked are never identified by name. As for the illustration, you can see four horses with cigarettes in their mouths. It's impossible to tell the horses apart, since the author didn't bother to describe their appearances. Compare My Little Pony; even as  a non-"brony" who has only a passing familiarity, I can identify the Mane Six(who, admittedly, have fantastical colors, from the purple Twilight Sparkle to Rainbow Dash's rainbow mane).

Daisy and Latoya then tell Latawyna that she shouldn't be drinking or smoking drugs, and Daisy knocks the drugs and alcohol out of Latawyna's hoof. Latawyna starts to regret her choices, as she begins feeling sick, and her sisters scold her for doing what others do.

Speaking of which, the illustrations show just how awkward realistically drawn horses look trying to drink drugs are, especially the horse holding the bottle with her mouth. You can see the illustration as the page image for this book's TV Tropes page.

As Daisy and Latoya try to convince Latawyna not to smoke drugs or drink, Connie complains that the two of them are "squares," and says they can't hang out with her if they won't do drugs, but they don't care, since drugs are harmful to the body. Apparently, cannabis is toxic to horses, but I'm not sure the author knew this.

As the horse sisters head home, Daisy promises to tell their parents about what Latawyna did, even after she tearfully pleads with them not to. Apparently, the narrator seems to have forgotten about Latawyna's parents' names, calling James anything from "Daddy horse" to "Father horse," and Sylvia "Mother horse" or "Mom horse."

Unlike most sapient horses, the horse family lives in what appears to be a stable, which naturally inspires a few questions. Are the horses civilized to brew the beer, harvest whatever goes into the drugs and sell them, or did they happen to find them laying around somewhere? How do the horses even make those things with hooves rather than hands? Was there even a reason to have the characters be horses rather than humans?

The parents are happy that Latoya and Daisy resisted the temptation but are sad that Latwyna failed to do so. Latwyna's father tells about how one of his friends took dugs and died, with a semi-realistic drawing of a horse dead of an overdose showing up in a children's book. It would be disturbing, but the entire scene comes off as absurd.

Latawyna then goes off on a spiel that lasts for most of two pages (which isn't as long as it sounds, but still...) in which she explains that she realizes that drugs and alcohol don't make you feel good, and that instead of "getting high," they should call it "getting low." As another sign of the book's clunky writing, she says, "Mother and Father," four times, and "Mom and Dad," once for good measure, all in the same line of dialogue. The amount of times a character should address the individuals they're speaking to by name varies, but it shouldn't be this often.

After Latawyna's parents express joy over her learning her lesson, she continues by saying she'll never drink alcohol or smoke drugs again, and she knows how to say "no way" to anyone offering those. The narration then remembers the parents' names as they give their daughter a hug and a kiss, concluding the story.

Review

By now, you should have some idea of what I think of this book, but I'll sum up my points here.

There isn't much of a plot. Three horses happen to encounter some horses who are doing drugs, one of them does them, and then learns a valuable lesson. Latawyna's character arc is rather inorganic, and it doesn't help that the narration prefers to tell, rather than show. The sole exception to that tendency is when Latawyna decides to imitate a scary noise she heard(which comes off as a rather random event), but even that's too unsubtle to make for effective characterization.

The characters are rather one-dimensional, defined as "good" or "bad" by whether they do drugs. This is quite disappointing, because in one of the Ramona Quimby books I read when I was young, specifically Ramona the Brave, Ramona's father developed a smoking problem that resulted in drama in his family, but was portrayed sympathetically(it's implied he started smoking due to being laid off at the start of the book). Perhaps most damning is how, since most characters show no unique characteristics or personality traits, most of them could be cut out with no impact on the plot; the only characters you need for this story is Latawyna, one of her less naughty sisters, Connie and one of Latawyna's parents, so the rest of Latawyna and Connie's siblings could be removed without consequence. If you're feeling daring, then perhaps Latawyna's sibling and their parent could be fused together as the person who stops Latawyna from using drugs and the person who tells the story about the overdosed horse.

Speaking of the anti-drug message, it's rather simplistic, assuming that people only do drugs due to peer pressure, and that it's possible to instantly go cold turkey if you so desire. Perhaps Latawyna could do so after only partaking once, but it wouldn't be that easy for Connie and her sisters if the author tried to give them a redemption arc.

In general, the book is poorly written, and tends to repeat things multiple times, from Latawyna being a "naughty horse," to how she got the message and decided not to do drugs again. The dialogue flows awkwardly, and the horses don't sound like real people(then again, it's hard to tell how old Latawyna and her sisters are supposed to be).

The art is rather poor-quality, and you should see it for yourself. I also have to question the decision to design the horses as realistic, since it doesn't fit the story. The story may not be all that light-hearted, but having realistic horses is out of place in a story in which the horses act more like humans.

All in all, this book is hilarious and memorable for the wrong reasons, but it's still worth a look if you'd like a laugh or two.