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A review by sarahbc93_
Black Beauty by Anna Sewell
4.0
It’s always slightly jarring when you realise you’ve been reading a book from the point of view of a horse, but at the end of the day, it is a beautiful story. It’s beautifully written, and there are passages where it is very emotional.
The story follows the life of one particular horse; Black Beauty and his journey between different masters and the life that he had with each of them. It details the work that he did, the environment that he lived in and the treatment that he received.
There are a lot of descriptions of the good and kind masters that he had, as well as of the mean and cruel masters. They always seem to come one after the other, so it feels a bit like a see-saw between good and bad.
You can definitely see Sewell’s love for horses and her desire to seem them treated humanely in this book. Any description of the treatment that the horses receive, even if it’s a good treatment, always has the negative flip side that it could be a whole lot worse for them. Sewell seems to be suggesting that the horses know enough about their surroundings and the work to know that they deserve better treatment, and I can’t think of a better way to get the character to emotionally connect with the reader than that.
The story follows the life of one particular horse; Black Beauty and his journey between different masters and the life that he had with each of them. It details the work that he did, the environment that he lived in and the treatment that he received.
There are a lot of descriptions of the good and kind masters that he had, as well as of the mean and cruel masters. They always seem to come one after the other, so it feels a bit like a see-saw between good and bad.
You can definitely see Sewell’s love for horses and her desire to seem them treated humanely in this book. Any description of the treatment that the horses receive, even if it’s a good treatment, always has the negative flip side that it could be a whole lot worse for them. Sewell seems to be suggesting that the horses know enough about their surroundings and the work to know that they deserve better treatment, and I can’t think of a better way to get the character to emotionally connect with the reader than that.