Black Beauty is the only published novel by writer Anna Sewell. According to Wikipedia (whose information can only be trusted so much), she originally wrote the book for people that work with horses. It's become most famous as a book for children.
I first came in to contact with the book Black Beauty because of a typing program that was on my computer when I was younger. One of the test passages was when Beauty is describing his appearance, starting with "I was now beginning to grow handsome..." that is the only part I had really read up until downloading it. That's not to say that I didn't see it in my elementary school--I did, and I tried to read it a few times but I just never made it past the first few pages. I'm not quite sure why. Anyway, it was downloadable to my Kindle, and I finally made my way through.
The book is a biography of a finely bred horse named Black Beauty, from when he was a foal, all the way through to old age. His life starts off rather charmed, but there were years when it was very hard. He also meets other horses, and learns of their life stories. I have to tell you, this book will give you a mega dose of the feels. I cried a quite a few parts when the horses were describing some of the hardships that they had went through. There were animals, like a particular mare named Ginger, who had grown up without knowing human kindness. It hurts me to think that any animal can have such a hard life, although I know it still happens today (hello, I live in New York City--we still have carriage rides that can be taken) to a lesser extent.
Apparently when the book came out, it brought a lot of awareness to the plight that cab horses in London were going through. Not only that, it also criticized people that did things to their horses for the sake of fashion, like bearing reins. From the (minimal) research that I've done, there are situations where the rein is still used, but for shows, and not to the extreme of making the horse look "proud" and hold their head tall. Horses lean their heads forward when doing things to help disperse the weight evenly.
 |
"Proudly" unable to move their necks |
That just looks lovely, doesn't it...? The thing that makes Beauty's story so special is that he doesn't just have cushy homes, he changes hands, and owners, experiencing the full spectrum of humanity. And above all else, he does his best to stay a sweet, kind, gentle horse. Even through the bad times, he doesn't allow it to change his disposition, always taking his mother's advice. Once again, a dose of the feels.
The copy that I had was a digital download from Kindle, for free. It doesn't have any pictures, but it is a very nice text copy, and most of the archaic or European words/phrases have a definition in my dictionary, and the ones that I couldn't look up, or needed a visual reference for, were easily found via web search. Whilst on the subject of vocabulary; this is not at all a difficult book. If you're reading it to a younger audience, you will have to define some of the words, and some picture references will be appropriate, but it should be easily digestible, although some parts will get their emotions going. If this is for a younger audience, and you're reading a paper copy, I do suggest having the internet near by, just for some pictures, especially if the young person isn't equine savvy. If they are, it might not be necessary. If you're older, you still might want to do some research, although if you're anything like me, a little research can lead to an hour of reading about diseases of horse hooves.
I suggest this book to anyone that likes animals, nice descriptions, history, and autobiographies. This is a very lovely book, and I'm happy to have read it.
No comments:
Post a Comment