KidLit Forum

"Black Beauty" by Anna Sewell was one of my favourite animal stories ever. I can say that I've also seen the film, I mean the series produced by London Weekend Television (1974). I must confess I liked the book better, once I started reading it I couldn't stop till the end. The film was also interesting but I had the impression that the plot was a bit changed and it didn't captivate me so much. The novel, having such a great success, I read it was sold in more than fifty million copies. It is a book that teaches us how to treat animals with kindness and a lot of respect, because animals have feeling too. Here, it is about a horse, a colt, that grows up beside his mother and she tries to teach him how to behave and respect his masters to be. During his life, he changes many masters, some of them treat him good but some not so good. The story is an autobiography told by the horse itself and it is written not only for children but for grown-ups too. We all know that children adore animals and there is also a treatment that involves animals' help. In the end he gets to stay with a nice family where he is very well taken care of and lives "happily ever after". Of course some of his masters call him "dumb animal" but as the author says and I really liked her words: " we call them dumb animals, and so they are, for they cannot tell us how they feel, but they do not suffer less because they have no words". (Black Beauty by Anna Sewell). So, I guess, reading this masterpiece it makes you think twice whether to harm an animal or not, most of the time they are better than us, people!

I also read that in England, people had used horses in many situations; they travelled with them and used them for work.When Anna Sewell wrote the book it was 19th century, the society evolved and began the industrialization, maybe because of this, people wanted to get rid of horses because they need to be cleaned and they also need a lot of food. Maybe people started to think that horses are no longer useful so they treated them bad, in order to fulfill their own wishes.A very big step in terms of animal's rights was the "Treat of Horses Bill" wich was a law adopted in 1821 and the people who beat or treated bad their horses would be prosecuted.