The Silver Pony

Ward executed the 80 wordless drawings that make up the book in casein.^[2] It was published in 1973 by Houghton, Mifflin.^[3]

Though it shares the form and length of Ward's wordless novels, it is not classified as one.^[4] The book won the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award, the Children's Book Showcase Award,^[5] and was a Boston Globe–Horn Picturebook Honor Book.^[6]

Ward first rose to public attention with the publication of Gods' Man in 1929, a wordless novel in engraved woodblocks. He made five more, the last of which was Vertigo in 1937, after which he worked on a variety of graphic projects, primarily in woodblocks.^[3] Some work was for children's books, for which he won awards such as a Newbery Medal for his illustrations to Elizabeth Coatsworth's The Cat Who Went to Heaven (1930), and a Caldecott Medal for his The Biggest Bear (1952).^[7] The Silver Pony was the first wordless book Ward published since he had produced Vertigo.^[2]