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[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/the_black_stallion_1979_film_poster.jpg]]

A book series by Walter Farley beloved by little girls everywhere. The first books deal with Alec and the Black, a half-wild Arabian stallion he comes across while on a cruise. When the ship crashes, Alec and the Black are stranded together on a desert island. He builds a bond with the horse, and both are eventually rescued and returned to New York. Home again, Alec meets up with an old racehorse trainer and convinces the man to train him and the Black. They then enter a match race as a wild card between a champion of the West Coast and a champion of the East. Obviously, they win.

The second book details Black's real owners stepping forward to claim him, and Alec has to venture back to Arabia to stake his claim on his favorite horse. Other books follow the exploits of the Black's son Satan and his other foals. The Black himself is still the main character throughout most of the series.

The first two books were adapted into movies, ''The Black Stallion'' (1979) and ''The Black Stallion Returns'' (1983), both of which were produced by Creator/FrancisFordCoppola. The twentieth and final book, a prequel, became a Creator/{{Disney}} IMAX film, ''The Young Black Stallion'' (2003).

[[folder:Novels in the series]]
# ''The Black Stallion'' (1941)
# ''The Black Stallion Returns'' (1945)
# ''Son of the Black Stallion'' (1947)
# ''The Island Stallion'' (1948)
# ''The Black Stallion and Satan'' (1949)
# ''The Blood Bay Colt'' (1951)
# ''The Island Stallion's Fury'' (1951)
# ''The Black Stallion's Filly'' (1952)
# ''The Black Stallion Revolts'' (1953)
# ''The Black Stallion's Sulky Colt'' (1954)
# ''The Island Stallion Races'' (1955)
# ''The Black Stallion's Courage'' (1956)
# ''The Black Stallion Mystery'' (1957)
# ''The Horse Tamer'' (1958)
# ''The Black Stallion and Flame'' (1960)
# ''The Black Stallion Challenged'' (1964)
# ''The Black Stallion's Ghost'' (1969)
# ''The Black Stallion and the Girl'' (1971)
# ''The Black Stallion Legend'' (1983)
# ''Young Black Stallion'' (with Stephen Farley, 1989)
[[/folder]]
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!!The series provides examples of:

* ABoyAndHisX: The premise of the whole series. The boy is sometimes a girl, but the X is always a horse.
* AccidentalAthlete: Alec, fortuitously, stays small so he can be the Black's jockey. Later books call attention to how hard it is for him and other jockeys to stay under the maximum weight.
%%* AdaptationDistillation: The movies
* AlienEpisode: ''The Island Stallion Races'' has two shape-shifting aliens named Jay and Flick helping Steve enter Flame into a race. Paranormal help is needed because Flame is feral and untrained.
* ArcWords: Farley has a tendency to describe a stretch duel with the following: "Head and head, they bobbed as one. Eye and eye. He [or 'she'] kept going. He took the challenge, met it, staved it off, and went on." Becomes almost a BrickJoke when the Black and Flame finally run side by side and the narrative reads "Both kept going. Each took up the other's challenge, met it, staved it off, and went on."
* ArtisticLicenseBiology: Azul Island has a population of horses which have been inbreeding for centuries with no ill effects. Farley hand-waves this by saying that they had good genes from the start... and at any rate, we do see one throwback 'mutant' stallion who poses a threat to the entire herd when he ousts Flame.
* ArtisticLicenseSports: A mix of this and societal change, as the world of horse racing in these books bears almost no resemblance to horse racing today. The one violation of the rules which the books acknowledge and deal with is the Black racing against Cyclone and Sun Raider in the first book -- since it's just a match race (not sponsored by a racing association), the Black can enter even without a known pedigree. A local newsman helps things along by spreading rumors of a "mystery horse" who could beat them both, raising interest to the point where the Black is invited.
* AutomatonHorses: Averted. Farley does a good job of describing day to day care of the animals.
* BecauseYouWereNiceToMe: As Alec gives The Black some sugar cubes, it becomes more tolerant of him, later saving his life from a cobra.
* [[BigGame Big Race]]: The climax of nearly every book. The Black always wins, of course.
* BondCreatures: Of a very mild sort -- only Alec can handle the Black and only Steve can handle Flame.
* BusCrash: Pam, the title character of ''The Black Stallion and the Girl'', dies offscreen in the next book. For bonus points, it actually was a bus crash.
* CrossOver: Once Flame enters the scene in ''The Island Stallion'', it's inevitable that the two central stallions will face off. They meet twice, in ''The Black Stallion and Flame'' and ''The Black Stallion Challenged''.
* CoolHorse: The Black, naturally, but also his children (Black Minx, Bonfire, Satan) and his main rival (Flame).
* ComingOfAgeStory: Alec grows from a young kid to a veteran jockey to the competent manager of a Thoroughbred farm over the course of the series.
* ContrivedCoincidence: More or less every encounter between the Black and Flame. In their first meeting, a shipwreck just happens to strand the Black within swimming distance of Azul Island, and in later books Flame's racing career is explicitly the work of 'outside' forces.
* DeathByAdaptation: [[spoiler: Alec's father]], an important supporting character in the books (especially ''Son of the Black Stallion''), is inserted onto the ship at the start of the film version of ''The Black Stallion'' in order to die in the shipwreck.
* DesertedIsland: The refuge of Alec after the shipwreck in the first book. Azul Island is also uninhabited, but Steve and an archaeologist friend find evidence that it used to be a fortress.
* DreamingOfThingsToCome: Steve knows Flame will be on Azul Island because he had a dream of seeing a red stallion on a cliff. Subverted when his friend Pitch informs him that he'd seen pictures of that cliff before and must have made it up; double-subverted when Steve really does see Flame there. (See RealLifeWritesThePlot, below).
* ADogNamedDog: The black stallion's only name is "the Black." (Later books reveal his given name to be Shetan).
* FamilyUnfriendlyViolence: Tom Pitcher's attempts to "tame" (read: brutalize and break) Flame.
* FriendToAllLivingThings: Pam is a gentle soul who attracts and controls animals through her kindness. Her {{Foil}} is the domineering Becky, who uses aggressive tactics.
* GenreShift: Farley departed from his normal horse-and-his-boy story and wrote mysteries and even a horror novel to full-on ''sci-fi'' in ''The Island Stallion Races''. To get himself and his horse to the mainland and into a race to save the island, Steve gets help from race-loving aliens. No, seriously.
* GlorySeeker: Averted with Steve Duncan, who does hate to lose, but his main goal in racing Flame is to raise enough money to buy Azul Island.
%%* HellishHorse: [[spoiler: The Black's sire]] in ''The Black Stallion Mystery''
* HeroicBSOD: Alec suffers a breakdown in ''The Black Stallion Revolts'' after learning of Pam's death. He then has a car accident and gets a concussion in the process, which only makes things worse.
* HorsingAround: The Black is decidedly feral, and the books make it plain that his erratic behavior is potentially dangerous to everyone, including Alec. Played straighter with Black Minx, who was spoiled as a filly and tends to bite -- a lot of Henry's time goes into retraining her.
* IShouldWriteABookAboutThis: Steve Duncan tells Alec he'll write a book about his discovery of Azul Island and Flame. Alec suggests he call it ''The Island Stallion''.
* InvincibleHero: The Black almost never loses. Justified, since the Black is half-Arabian and Arabian horses are [[PintsizedPowerhouse specifically bred for speed and endurance.]] Nowadays Arabians and part-Arabs are only allowed to race other Arabians.[[note]]In real life, Arabs don't have both the speed AND stamina to beat Thoroughbreds at modern racing distances. At a more moderate pace, they could outlast them, hence their popularity for sports like Endurance riding.[[/note]] There's also the fact that his non-Arab half is [[spoiler: possibly mystical and/or aliens. No, seriously.]] The Black loses once due to a technicality, despite crossing the finish line first (he broke from Alec's control and bumped other horses, causing him to be placed lower due to interference).
* LaterInstallmentWeirdness: The book starts as a fairly realistic albeit dramatic children's adventure: boy rescues and tames a beautiful wild horse and rides it to fame and glory. It ends with the reveal that the horse is probably an alien hybrid and that extraterrestrials have been guiding both the horse and the boy.
* MiracleRally: Several races end with the Black (or the focus horse of that title) overcoming a bad start or aggressive race riding to get up in the final strides.
* MythicalMotifs: From the first movie, but not in the original novel; Alec's father tells Alec about the legend of Bucephalus, a magnificent stallion who was to be put to death by a king after the king was unable to claim the horse for himself. The horse's life was spared when a young boy claimed that he could tame and ride the wild stallion, and the king declared that if the boy could do that, he could keep the horse for himself. The boy, who would grow up to become Alexander the Great, proceeded to do just that. The similarities between Alexander and Bucephalus, and Alec and The Black, are hard to ignore.
* OldMaster: Henry, who is an old racehorse trainer; when Alec has a bad fall in the third book, Henry proves he still has what it takes to climb into the saddle, though his techniques [[GoodIsNotNice aren't always friendly]].
* OnlyTheChosenMayRide: The Black, Flame, and to a lesser extent Satan won't let most riders on their backs.
* OpeningNarration: the film version of ''The Black Stallion Returns'' has a brief one, provided by Hoyt Axton, who played Alec's father in the first movie.
* {{Prequel}}: ''The Young Black Stallion''.
* RealLifeWritesThePlot: Farley first came up with the idea of Flame while under anesthesia for an ear operation.
* RearingHorse: On the cover of many books, including ''Son of the Black Stallion''.
* SettingUpdate: The first book was published in 1941. The 1979 film version moves the setting forward slightly to 1946, presumably to maintain the time period while avoiding interference from UsefulNotes/WorldWarII. Despite featuring Mickey Rooney reprising his movie role as Henry Dailey, the TV series dropped the 1940s setting entirely in favor of the contemporary 1990s. The prequel film ''The Young Black Stallion'' restores the 1940s setting.
* SilenceIsGolden: The island sequence has no dialogue.
* SpinOffspring: Several books center on the Black's sons and daughters, including Satan, Bonfire, and Black Minx.
* TakeAThirdOption: Steve seems to be caught between leaving Flame where he is on Azul Island or taking him away and leaving the other horses to fend for themselves. When aliens help him take Flame into horse racing, he realizes he has a way to earn enough money to simply ''buy'' Azul Island.
%% UnderdogsNeverLose
* WorfHadTheFlu: The Black and Flame are effectively equal; the Black wins their one official match by "the thinnest fraction of a nose." However, the Black had the more experienced jockey in Alec, plus the race was on dirt rather than Flame's preferred turf, so fans of the red stallion don't lose much in defeat.
* WorthyOpponent: In the main series, Flame to the Black. In other books, there is usually one dominant horse to challenge the protagonist, e.g. Princess Guy to Bonfire and Wintertime to Black Minx.
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