Andy Hoddel was different from other boys. He never really understood the game they played, in which they 'owned' the factories, the library and the police station in their town, but he longed to tell them he owned something too.

Then he met an old tramp and paid him three dollars for Beecham Park Racecourse.

When Andy's friends find out they are horrified. Andy would have to be told he'd been taken for a ride. But how could they tell him without breaking his heart, especially when all the staff at the racecourse were calling him the 'owner'? How could anyone take away his racecourse?

Kate Constable introduces this Text Classics edition of Patricia Wrightson's I Own the Racecourse!

Patricia Wrightson was born in Lismore, NSW, in 1921. She was the author of twenty-seven children's novels including Nargun and the Stars, The Ice is Coming and The Crooked Snake. She has been awarded CBCA Book of the Year four times and was also awarded the Hans Christian Andersen Award, Dromkeen Medal and Order of the British Empire for her contribution to literature.

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