In Ponies on Parade by Jeanne Betancourt, Anna is the star. Anna loves to draw and is great with painting. Her Pony Pal friends think so highly of her, they encourage her to enter a contest that is going on for the Fall Festival. Only ten winners will be selected to paint their creative idea onto a life-size pony and Pam and Lulu think that Anna has it in the bag. The only problem is that the girls have a three page report due the same day as the contest submission and Anna hasn’t even started her report.

It’s getting down to crunch time for her report but Anna doesn’t even know where to start. Her Pony Pal friends are really good in school and get straight A’s. Anna on the other hand has a much more difficult time since she is dyslexic. When she finally has to fess up to her mom that she hasn’t even gotten started on her report, all work on her contest submission is forced onto the backburner and she is grounded from going on any trail rides until she has finished her homework. Anna tries her best to buckle down, but she can’t even get through the first sentence of her research.

When Lulu and Pam find out Anna’s situation, they immediately come up with a plan to help Anna get her report done and get back to work on pony painting contest. The girls meet up at Anna’s house after nailing down what exactly she is going to write about. Pam and Lulu read all the research to Anna so she doesn’t have to worry about getting all mixed up. Before Anna knew it, she had all three pages of her report written and all that was left was to type it up.

Anna’s report gave her inspiration for what she was going to do for her contest submission. She chose to write about the history of Shetland Ponies. Her pony, Acorn was a Shetland pony and she loved him very much. She drew up her design giving her horse drawing all of Acorn’s features and on the side of it, she had a special place to paint the special history that she had written about for school. Everything is smooth sailing until Tommy and Mike decide to stir up trouble for the Pony Pal girls. Sabotage is their mission and it may mean that Anna’s submission will be a huge failure.