I reckon I shall repost this to my blog.

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While the ponies from the show eat cupcakes and throw parties, life of real horses and ponies ain’t as cheerful and optimistic. And here’s a book ’bout it, written in style of autobiography of a horse, I reckon y’all know this one.

Black Beauty by Anna Sewell

Its author was bedridden for her entire life due to childhood trauma, and it was her only one and last book. Moreover, she suffered from another disease during her work on this book. I wonder how much strengths and will does it take, to keep writing even in such situation. It took about 7 years and she died soon after this book was finally published. It seems like she was temporary immortal just like me.

This is the story of a titled horse named Black Beauty, told by himself. For first he was happy with his first owner, among his friends- mare Ginger, pony Merrylegs, and some people. But several years later he was sold, and then sold again, and again, and again. Some owners treated him well and some ones were bad. He made several friends and lost them all one by one; until, after all the trials, he finally found his last home.

The book also brings up the topic of ethical treatment to horses. Perhaps there is no domestic animal as helpful to humans as horses, but people treat them bad more often than dogs or cats. There is still many people who think that dogs and cats are friends while horses are no more than livestock. Since publishing of this book many things have been changed, including humans’ treatment to the horses. But there is still a lot of cruelty and unfairness towards horses so this book doesn’t lose its topicality today.

This book is very special to me since the story of this horse is rather similar to mine. Maybe someday I will write ’bout it at greater length. Now I must say, this story was written in XIX century so it’s free to downloading. You can get it on OpenLibrary and even get it to your Kindle there. It also has at least 5 screenings, I think most awesome of them is this one.