Totti Gang

Black Beauty – Review (Feb 12, 2022)

This book, by Anna Sewell, is about the life story of a horse called Black Beauty who undergoes different treatments, kind and harsh, with different owners.

Black Beauty is a mild-tempered horse, born in a stable in a pleasant field. He was given the freedom to gallop as he pleased with in the boundaries of the pleasant meadows.

His mother was a decent mare who never had any bad habits like biting or kicking. She was of a decent racing bread. Her owner was Joe Green, who was very kind. He fires a Plough Boy for troubling the colts by throwing stones and sticks at them to make them gallop for his enjoyment.

There were many sad affairs in the life of Black Beauty like breaking in (getting trained to carry people on the back), having to leave his mother and family to go to the new owner, seeing other horses at a guest house being left to be burnt alive in an accidental fire in the middle of the night etc,

His second owner, a gentleman called Squire Gordon was also kind to animals. There he found three other horses called Merrylegs, Ginger and Sir Oliver, an elderly horse of the house.

Though Ginger was rude to Black Beauty initially, they soon became the best of friends. Ginger was treated harshly. Check reins (the reins which hold the horses head straight, painfully) and whips were often used on her by her previous masters and hence she developed the bad habit of kicking and snapping and had hatred for mankind.

Black Beauty saves Squire Gordon and his family member’s life in a couple of incidents and was always felt proud of that.

When Black Beauty was at his third owner, he had to undergo the pain of wearing checkreins just for the want of style of his mistress.

After many sad and happy affairs and changes of owners, he was finally bought by a farmer who sells him to the first owner, Joe Green and reunited with his mother.

Anna Sewell has added the charcoal of the content of this book to the blazing fire of kindness towards animals in my heart. Through this book, I learnt so many aspects about horses which I never had learnt before.

I feel very sad about the cruelty towards animals by us, human beings and I request everyone to be nice to the animals and tell others to do the same.

After I read this book, I have a feeling that Black Beauty is always with me and I joined him in my “kind and fun-loving” group, the Totti Gang.

I recommend all the children to read this book and develop kindness towards animals.

I liked this book so much that no number is enough to rate this book.

Thank you!