Black Beauty

I was very small, I don't remember everything. I remember a big field of green grass. There were a few trees in it, and on hot days my mother stood under a tree and I drank her milk. Later I began to eat the grass. There were some other young horses in the field. We played and ran round and round the field. We jumped about, or we went down on our backs on the grass and kicked our legs happily in the air. We were glad to be alive. My mother went to work every day. She came back in the evening, and I told her all about my day. “I'm glad you are happy,” she said. “Play as much as you can. But you must remember that you are not like these other young horses. They are all going to be farm horses; they're good horses, but not like us. Your father is well known in this part of the country, and your grandfather - my father - was Lord Westland's best horse. When you're a little older, you'll learn to take people on your back or to take them from place to place in their carriages.” Otto-Classics Graded Readers Series are outstanding classics written by famous writers. The language and vocabulary in the books are controlled and simplified by specialist ELT authors and compilers according to Common European Framework so that they can be easily understood by new learners of English. Depending on the eight levels from A1 to B2+, the longer stories are divided into a number of chapters and every chapter has its own activities. Some of the activities in the books are meant to be done in pairs. You may work with a partner to solve problems and design projects that reflect not only your own thinking but also new ideas you and your mates will discover by working in groups.