Total Page : 268
Publisher : BiblioLife
Publication Date : 2008 08 18
>> A must for animal lovers
I first read Beautiful Joe as a youngster probably 40 years ago it broke my heart to read of Joe s beginnings with Jenkins in the opening chapters of the book but as I went on and he was rescued I found I couldn t put it down The Italian s tragic loss of his animals in a barn fire still brings tears to my eyes and Malta the cat remains a favorite character simply because she s a cat
I am so surprised and pleased that the publisher has re printed the story and that Amazon is offering it for sale because of the book s age well over 100 yrs old and the style of writing it used I had my mother s book given her by my grandfather when she was a girl so the grammatical style was still in the original I was sure it was one of those stories that would be lost in oblivion for just that reason
I do plan to purchase the book for both my daughter for Christmas as well as an additional copy for her former school s library Thank you so much Amazon for bringing this timeless story to us once again
>> A note on the Kindle version formatting
It s not a huge deal but this version has a large left margin The only impact is that this means you can t see as much text on the screen at a time If this bothers you there are other versions that cost just a few dollars that would probably not have this issue
>> A book that changed the world
Published in 1893 Beautiful Joe was the first Canadian book to sell a million copies and was extremely popular in America too selling almost a million copies by 1900 A work of fiction told from the dog s point of view it is based upon the true story of an abused dog in the tradition of 1877 s Black Beauty It reflects many of the unfortunate realities of society in those days but it had an incredible impact upon the Western world s ideas about humane treatment of animals Interestingly it is still published with the author listed as Marshall Saunders In fact it was written by Margaret Marshall Saunders and published using her middle name since it was felt that no one would want to buy a book written by a woman She was in fact the first woman to write a book which sold a million copies
There s also a website about the real beautiful Joe at beautifuljoe org
