Black Beauty

Anne Hutchings, a former elementary-school teacher-librarian with the
Durham Board of Education, is an educational consultant.

Anna Sewell’s classic, Black Beauty, was originally published in the
1870s. A fictional autobiography, Black Beauty describes his happy
beginnings as a foal, his adventures with both bad and good owners, and
his eventual retirement. Written to protest the inhumane treatment of
horses common in early 19th-century England, the novel is often
considered to be overly sentimental and melodramatic. Barbara
Greenwood’s storybook retelling of this classic makes it more
accessible to today’s young readers. Relatively faithful to the
original, it describes many of the practices that Anna Sewell condemned
but does not dwell on the cruelties. Rene Benoit’s illustrations are a
welcome accompaniment to the text. Recommended.