Misty of Chincoteague Conspiracy Theory

While I enjoyed Pony Penning Week on Chincoteague Island last month and launched my latest book Marguerite, Misty and Me, I learned there is a Misty of Chincoteague conspiracy theory! (Cue “The Twilight Zone” music.)

It started like this: I was at Sundial Books on Main Street doing a book signing. The owner of the shop brought out two books by Sanford Tousey, one titled Chinky the Banker Pony and the other Chinky Joins the Circus. He asked me if I had ever seen them or heard that some people think Marguerite Henry copied the idea for Misty of Chincoteague. My defenses on behalf of Marguerite went up immediately!

“There’s no way Marguerite Henry, a Newbery Medal-winning author would have plagiarized this book,” I thought. And several arguments against this idea flew immediately to my brain. I had, after all, spent the last two and a half years digging deep into the life of Marguerite Henry, and even though I never met her while she was alive, I felt as though I had met her on the pages of her books, by reading her fan mail, through speaking with people who knew her and by reading as many articles about her as I could find.

I was distracted from mentally preparing my rebuttal when the shopkeeper told me the price of the Chinky the Banker Pony book. It was priced at $350! “Well, I won’t be buying the book to study for my future blog post debunking the conspiracy theory,” I thought.

I posted on Instagram and Facebook, a photo of the Sanford Tousey books with its bold colors, swimming ponies and puffy clouds and the lead caption “CONSPIRACY ALERT.” Commenters had feelings on this. A friend said to me, “That’s a blog post I’d like to read.” So now I will share my thoughts on why I do not believe Marguerite Henry copied Sanford Tousey’s Chinky the Banker Pony while writing Misty of Chincoteague.

My Thoughts on the Misty of Chincoteague Conspiracy Theory

Starting off, there are ancient pyramids in Mexico and ancient pyramids in Egypt. Cultures and people can independently come up with their own unique ideas similar to others’ ideas. How many middle grade horse books are there with a storyline of a bratty rich girl and an underdog girl whose family can’t afford horses? How many books are there where a faithful dog dies at the end (and please, authors, stop writing those books!). Just because there are two books about the same topic doesn’t mean one copied the other.

Love Misty of Chincoteague? Peep a photo of my mom’s friend riding her circa 1952.

Second, as my book Marguerite, Misty and Me outlines, Marguerite Henry attended college in the 1920s. She studied journalism. I was not alive in the 1920s going to journalism classes, but my guess is that the whole subject of plagiarism and properly citing sources and storytelling integrity was spoken of and taught. Before Marguerite wrote children’s books, she spent twenty years writing for magazines, some of them business magazines. She even ghostwrote for household name industrialists for The Saturday Evening Post. She was a true journalist before she devoted herself to children’s fiction-based- on-fact books.

Third, an older gentleman I interviewed for Marguerite, Misty and Me told me that Marguerite never read the books of Walter Farley or Will James because she did not want to ever be accused of having a similar storyline. This man is an academic himself, and I am taking his word for it. If you want to know who the man is, send me a DM or email.

Next, honesty was a value to the Henry family. In one article I read about Marguerite’s childhood, she mentioned when she was little, she harvested some veggie or herb from a neighbor’s garden without asking. Her older sister Gertrude, five years her senior, told her she had to go confess to the neighbor. Marguerite wrote the weight was lifted when she revealed her actions. This leads me to believe her family valued integrity.

Along with that point, children are excellent at sniffing out phonies v. authentic, good-hearted people. The fact Marguerite developed such a following during her writing years, and the affection children had for her, you can just tell she was, as they say, a good egg. (As I interviewed people who knew Marguerite for my book, the word “love” came out all the time. Not just, “She was so nice,” but “I loved Marguerite Henry.”)

Finally, the woman who tipped Marguerite Henry off to the exciting wild pony roundup on Chincoteague was Dr. Mary Alice Jones. What you need to know about her is that over the course of her life, she was an author too before she got hired by Rand McNally, Marguerite’s publisher, to be the children’s book editor. Dr. Jones’s niche was children’s religious books. Over the course of her life, her books sold 20 million copies. Dr. Jones taught Christian education all over the world, and for a time was affiliated with the Lutheran Church. I read the response letter from Jones to Bennet Harvey, of Rand McNally when Bennet offered her the position of editor. It was a several-page, thoughtful response. Jones was reluctant to leave Christian ministry because she truly felt it was her calling in life. Also, she was very concerned about doing a job she had never done. She wrote something to the effect, “I would feel so awful if I picked a series of duds [referring to selecting stories for publication].”

Having said all that, based on my reading of several Dr. Mary Alice Jones papers at the Newberry Library Archive in Chicago, she was a woman of integrity, who took her faith seriously and strove to authentically live out the virtues presented in the Bible. I do not believe she was driven by the almighty dollar. It was Dr. Jones who heard the tale of a man fresh back from Chincoteague during a dinner party. He wowed the crowd with his stories of the swimming ponies, the Saltwater Cowboys and the foal auction. Soon after, Dr. Jones told Marguerite about the man’s story, suggesting she take a trip to Chincoteague Island to see for herself if that event would be the basis for a good children’s book.

Marguerite met up with her illustrator Wesley Dennis. She stayed at Miss Molly’s Inn while she researched and gathered ideas for a storyline for Misty of Chincoteague. Perhaps she had seen the book Chinky the Banker Pony at some point, but the stories are totally different. The one similarity is a horseman named Clarence Bixby in Chinky the Banker Pony and in Marguerite’s story the old-timey horseman is Clarence Beebe. Is it possible Sanford met Grandpa Beebe and based his character on the man? Yes. Do I believe Marguerite stole Sanford’s ideas? No.

There you have it. What do you think? Chincoteague Step Through Time Tours has a short video on Facebook where you can read the book. CLICK HERE to see Chinky the Banker Pony and decide for yourself.

If you’re a big Misty of Chincoteague fan and lover of all the horse books by Marguerite Henry, I think you will enjoy my new book Marguerite, Misty and Me. CLICK HERE to scope it out.

Your turn: Do you believe the Misty of Chincoteague conspiracy theory? Please leave a comment to share your views.

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