6/17: black beauty

Half-way through my trip home yesterday I finished the novel I was reading, so I went into a bookstore in the Houston airport and bought Black Beauty.  We had an abridged recording of it when we were young, and we listened to it a lot, but I'd never read it.  I had forgotten that it's presented in Black Beauty's own voice, and it's wild to think about the rhetorical and philosophical implications of that choice.  Today I found out how influential the novel was on legislation involving horses in Britain and on general attitudes about the treatment of animals in a number of countries.  Way to go, Anna Sewell!