This is a re-read, of course. I think I first read Beautiful Joe well over 50 years ago. My only beef with Beautiful Joe, reading it now as an adult, might be its rather heavy-handed preaching about cruelty to animals and about the need for kindess in general. Consider, for example, this gentle diatribe from a traveler Miss Laura encounters on the train: "Think of the cattle on the western plains. Choked with thirst in summer and starved and frozen in winter. Dehorned and goaded on to trains and steamers. Tossed about and wounded and suffering on voyages. Many of them dying and being thrown into the sea. Others landed sick and frightened. Some of them slaughtered on docks and wharves to keep them from dropping dead in their tracks. What kind of food does their flesh make? It's rank poison. Three of my family have died of cancer. I never eat meat." Maybe some of this "preaching" can be explained by the book's publisher, The American Baptist Publication Society. But no matter, really. It's still a good book, even for this old grey-haired geezer. If you like dogs and if you like a good story, then you'll like this book. And if your kids or grandkids should read it and like it, then dig out those old Jim Kjelgaard Big Red books, or Albert Payson Terhune's Sunnybank collie books, or maybe some of Jack O'Brien's Silver Chief books or James Oliver Curwood's Kazan and Baree. They're all still good reads, fifty, sixty or a hundred years later. Marshall Saunders probably still had that "new" book about Black Beauty freshly in mind when this book was written. It's a canine version of BB, really. But derivative doesn't necessarily mean second rate. This book was first rate in 1893 and it still is today. Read it to your kids/grandkids, or give it to them to read themselves. And tell them about your own excitement when you first read it. ( )

This is a book I remember loving as a child, and I've long thought to re-read it. I knew the version I read than (and still had) was abridged, so I sought out an unabridged version online and ended up with the Library of Congress Centennial Bestseller edition with an introduction by Roger Caras. The book wasn't as compelling as I remember it being, though in its unabriged format, it probably wouldn't have compelled me as a child, either. Well, it might have. My memory of the book is that poor Beautiful Joe suffered much cruelty, and, while he did, that was mostly in the first chapter. Then he was rescued and lived happily ever after as one of the world smartest and most intuitive dogs, reporting on stories of cruelty to OTHER animals and pets he came across and heard about. The stories of routine cruelty were certainly interesting. One of the most interesting things to me was on the inside of the books jacket and in Caras's introduction -- apparently Black Beauty (another childhood favorite, though I think much drier reading today and in its unabridged format -- I should re-read that one, too) and this book were extraordinarily influential in changing the ways in which animal were treated: "There can be no question that both Sewell's and Saunder's landmark books played an important role in furthering public sentiment against cruelty to animals, which in turn gave fresh momentum to the humane movement as it entered the new century." (Both were written in the latter half of the 19th century.) ( )

; bks 26/12/2007 7:16

Sentimental and preachy but still touching. http://www.canadianauthors.net/s/saun... ( )

http://gr4c5.wordpress.com/2006/12/15... ( )

This book is an interesting piece of history, it's really a somewhat long pamhlet on animal rights, the edition I have was partially underwritten by the necent ASPCA. It's preachy and more than a little classist, but when I was a kid, I found it a good read. (yes, I am a dog person)