Black Beauty: High Interest Classics with Comprehension Activities

Anna Sewell

Jan 2008 · Bring the Classics to Life: Level 2 Book 11 · EDCON Publishing Group

About this ebook

Bring The Classics To Life series -Reading Level 2. This novel has been adapted into 10 short chapters that will excite the reluctant reader as well as the enthusiastic one. There are student activity pages following each of the 10 chapters. Key words are defined and used in context. Multiple-choice questions require the student to recall specific details, sequence the events, draw inferences from story context, develop another name for the chapter, and choose the main idea. An Answer Key is in the back of the book. In our society, knowledge of these Classics is a cultural necessity. This adapted and abridged classic will improve fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. The content is appropriate for elementary level readers as well as adults reading below level. Reading level measured by the Fry Readability Formula and McGraw-Hill's Core Vocabulary. 

About the author

Anna Sewell, March 30, 1820 - April 25, 1878 Anna Sewell was on March 30, 1820 in Yarmouth, Norfolk, England. She was raised a Quaker by her father a bank manager and her mother, a children's novelist. At the age of fourteen, Sewell hurt her knee during a fall and the injury never healed right. Even though she could not walk well, she could still ride horses and drive a horse drawn buggy. It was this form of freedom that sparked her concern for the welfare of horses. She wrote "Black Beauty" when she was in her fifties, but died a year after it was published in 1877. While she never earned much from the book while she was alive, after her death, the novel snowballed into a something extraordinary. The book was about the abuses horses sustained in their lifetimes, but was told from the unique viewpoint of the horse. Even though the book was intended for children, it impacted all generations and caused everyone who read it to take a look at the inhumane treatment horses received. In the one hundred plus years since "Black Beauty" had been published, over 30 million copies have been printed. At least eight motion pictures have been made based on the novel and it is a well known children's classic. Anna Sewell died on April 25, 1878 in Old Catton, Norfolk.