The purpose of this paper is to find out which characteristics the female and male characters have in five selected horse books in children's literature. I have analyzed five horse books by Professor Maria Nikolajeva’s gender roles schedule. I have chosen to do a qualitative text analysis and the questions I chose to ask for the books are: Which characteristics does the girls and the boys have in the selected horse books according to Nikolajeva’s gender chart? What is the relationship between the main characters and the horse/horses according to the theories of Backman? What does the typical horse book look like today? What I come to conclusion in my paper is that all the horse books I analyzed have female main characters, and the girls in these books about horses take a lot of space and demonstrate themselves strong. But at the same time I have also come to the conclusion that all the girls in the books are very dependent on their horses, and in these books are all the horses of the male sex. But I think girls can with the help of horse books also challenge their gender role.