Black Beauty by Anna Sewell

from goodreads

2.5 stars

When we were choosing our books for the year my book club had a fun time. We learned that three out of the four of us did not want to read Anne of Green Gables (go here to see my thoughts about Anne). We learned that one of our members had never read a book about cats, simply because she doesn't like cats. (We all had a great laugh about that, it was truly awesome.) She persevered through It's like this Cat which was a big deal for her. And I concealed that I did not like horses making Black Beauty not very high on my list of must reads.

I got bit by a horse when I was five and never really took a shining to them after that. I was just trying to feed it some hay. I think it might of thought my hair was the hay as it was pretty close to the same colour. Crazy horse. So for any of you who boycott books about animals because you don't like that particular animal, give it a try. If I can do it and my book club friend can do it so can you.

Synopsis

Black Beauty is a beautiful horse. He is well bred and well mannered. Through his life's experiences we learn about the love and cruelty humans can show animals. We see how kindness and common sense is always the way to go.

My Thoughts

Well, it was not my favourite read. And that feeling had nothing to do with the horse theme, though that didn't help. To me, this book was just one depressing thing after another. A very doomsday view of life. Black Beauty is on a really nice farm but his fellow horse was treated badly before and has a chip on her shoulder. Black Beauty then moves to a different farm and has to wear a horrible rein because it is the fashion. Then he goes to a nice taxi driver, but hears all the horrors of the other horses. So, he does experience good things but it is always mingled with bad stuff. Can't we have just one nice positive part with no negatives?

I also found that there wasn't much flow. It almost read as a serial story from the newspaper. There were lots of little story lines but when it was all put together it was rather choppy. The segues into the different story lines were rather abrupt. And, there wasn't much of a plot. It was more like a horse's memoir.

I did like how the story was written from Black Beauty's perspective. It is kind of interesting to get the horses perspective on things and not always have the humans perspective on what they think is ailing the horse. My only thing is, how did the author know that was what the horse was thinking? For example, the blinders used on the harnesses for the horses. Now I can see how the horse might not like them, or wish to see what was making certain noises so they could calm themselves. It makes sense to me. But, how does the author know that the horses don't like blinders. Perhaps they do. I don't know. There were other instances like that. Where it makes sense that the horse wouldn't like it, because us as humans wouldn't, but was it true of the actual horse? I'm not sure.

I think this would be a great book for a 10 to 13 year old. Especially one that loves horses. It is a great way to introduce the topic of humane treatment of animals, without making it all political and crazy. The negativity probably wouldn't bother an older child as much as an adult. It is a book that has the potential to make you think.