My Friend Flicka is a 1941 novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

 by Mary O'Hara

Mary O'Hara (author)

Mary O'Hara Alsop was an American author and screenwriter.-Biography:Mary O'Hara Alsop was born July 10, 1885 in Cape May Point, New Jersey, the third child of Reverend Dr. Reese Fell Alsop and Mary Lee Spring. O'Hara, who was named after her maternal grandmother, Mary O'Hara Spring , grew up in...

, about Ken McLaughlin, the son of a Wyoming

Wyoming

Wyoming is a state in the mountain region of the Western United States. The western two thirds of the state is covered mostly with the mountain ranges and rangelands in the foothills of the Eastern Rocky Mountains, while the eastern third of the state is high elevation prairie known as the High...

 rancher, and his horse

Horse

The horse is one of two extant subspecies of Equus ferus, or the wild horse. It is a single-hooved mammal belonging to the taxonomic family Equidae. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million years from a small multi-toed creature into the large, single-toed animal of today...

 Flicka. It was the first in a trilogy

Trilogy

A trilogy is a set of three works of art that are connected, and that can be seen either as a single work or as three individual works. They are commonly found in literature, film, or video games...

, followed by Thunderhead (1943) and Green Grass of Wyoming (1946). The popular 1943 film

Film

A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...

 version featured a young Roddy McDowall

Roddy McDowall

Roderick Andrew Anthony Jude "Roddy" McDowall was an English actor and photographer. His film roles included Cornelius and Caesar in the Planet of the Apes film series...

. It was followed by film adaptations of the other two novels, Thunderhead, Son of Flicka

Thunderhead, Son of Flicka (film)

Thunderhead, Son of Flicka is a 1945 Technicolor family film directed by Louis King. It was adapted to screen by Dwight Cummins and Dorothy Yost from the novel by Mary O'Hara, and is based on the second book in the series, following Flicka, which was filmed in 1943 and remade in 2006...

 in 1945 and Green Grass of Wyoming

Green Grass of Wyoming

Green Grass of Wyoming is a 1948 film starring Peggy Cummins and Charles Coburn. The film is based on the third book in the popular, "My Friend Flicka" trilogy, written by Mary O'Hara...

 in 1948. A television series followed during 1956-1957 that first aired on CBS, then on NBC

NBC

The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...

, with reruns on ABC

American Broadcasting Company

The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...

 and on CBS between 1959 and 1966.