Smoky the Cow Horse

Will James (1892–1942) was a Canadian-American artist and author of books about the American west, in particular, horses. His works consistently captured the imagination of the public, earning him the nickname “the Pied Piper of the West.” He wrote the 1926 book Smoky the Cowhorse, which won the Newbery Medal in 1927 and still remains in print. Several movie adaptations of the story have been created, including a 1933 version that included Will James himself as the narrator. He was inducted into the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame in 1991 and into the Hall of Great Westerners of the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in 1992, on the hundredth anniversary of his birth.

Keith Szarabajka has appeared in many films, including The Dark Knight, Missing, and A Perfect World, and on such television shows as The Equalizer, Angel, Cold Case, Golden Years, and Profit. Szarabajka has also appeared in several episodes of Selected Shorts for National Public Radio. He won the 2001 Audie Award for Unabridged Fiction for his reading of Tom Robbins’s Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates and has won several Earphones Awards.