Product Description

An introduction to the classic stories of childhood, the books in this series should prove ideal for parents and infants to share and for older children to enjoy alone. This is the story of a horse who moves from place to place until a chance encounter creates a new turn of events.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1217389 in Books
• Published on: 2003-01-30
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 1 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
A horse is a horse of course, unless of course the horse is Black Beauty. Animal-loving children have been devoted to Black Beauty throughout this century, and no doubt will continue through the next. Although Anna Sewell's classic paints a clear picture of turn-of-the-century London, its message is universal and timeless: animals will serve humans well if they are treated with consideration and kindness.

Black Beauty tells the story of the horse's own long and varied life, from a well-born colt in a pleasant meadow to an elegant carriage horse for a gentleman to a painfully overworked cab horse. Throughout, Sewell rails--in a gentle, 19th-century manner--against animal maltreatment. Young readers will follow Black Beauty's fortunes, good and bad, with gentle masters as well as cruel. Children can easily make the leap from horse-human relationships to human-human relationships, and begin to understand how their own consideration of others may be a benefit to all. (Ages 9 to 12)

Review
Never before has this favorite been so handsomely, and appropriately, illustrated. Keeping (d. 1988), a master draftsman who illustrated 300 books, including all of Dickens, has provided a bountiful number of drawings (some subtly touched with color), combining piercing caricature, compassion, and a sure eye for the horses' beauty, movement, and (at the worst of times) plight. A masterpiece of illustration, capturing the book's drama and period while rising nobly above its sentimentality. (Kirkus Reviews)

About the Author
Anna Sewell (1820-78) was born in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk. Black Beauty, her only book, was completed and published in 1877, just a few months before she died, so she did not live to know of the book's huge success. Apart from being a good story, Black Beauty was instrumental in changing people's attitudes towards horses, and domestic animals in general.