Black Beauty (Puffin Classics) - Anna Sewell

Author's product rating:   

Story	Outstanding
Characters	Outstanding
How does it compare to other audio books by the same author?	Excellent

Advantages:	you will never look at a horse in the same light .  beautifully written
Disadvantages:	cant put it down .  so parts may upset young children

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Anne Sewell’s black beauty is a true beauty indeed. Never before have the lives, the thoughts and the feelings of our favourite equine friends been so beautifully portrayed.

The story of black beauty starts at his birth and takes us right up to his retirement. Together with the stunning black beauty we share his highs, as he gallops freely with the beautiful but highly strung ginger and the cute, naughty little Merry legs, to when he is beaten and cruelly treated and your heart practically rips from your heart when black beauty sees the love of his life, ginger, starved, thin and listless and then one day sees her dead on the meat truck.

But black beauty is not a doom and gloom book. Its fantastic. A well loved classic puffin novel.

I highly recommend that everyone should read this book. It will be loved by people of all ages. It is also a fantastic read for horse lovers, who then begin to see their faithful friends in a completely different light.

It truly is a fantastic portrayal of the life of a horse, from birth, to being tacked up and ridden the first time, and to his first experiences with the Farrier. He also describes his views upon the fire of an overnight stay barn that him and ginger get caught up in and how he didn’t want to leave ginger behind. And how black beauty saves his owners life, but is then made ill by the young stable hands negligence and how his owner then has to stay with him, round the clock to nurse him back to health.

Also Anne Sewell makes you become highly hatred to the upper classes when a stuck up woman demands that the horses’ heads be held higher in the carriage, but then the horses (black beauty and ginger) begin to panic and start to choke.

It’s a fantastic read, and you will never be able to look at a horse in the same light. I really do highly recommend that you read this book. However I do recommend that adults read the book before giving it to young children as some very young children may find the scenes of abuse (which are carefully written but may still upset very young children) as well as the scene of the death of ginger.

I must stress that these views are solely my own and do not reflect upon the views of anyone else.

Thank you