Anna Sewell tells the whole story from inside the horse, from a peaceful meadow through years of harder and harder owners, and dedicated it to her own mother. That narrator's-eye view of being worked, sold, and mistreated gives eight to twelve year olds a genuinely different vantage point on kindness and cruelty than most books manage.
Chapters
A long one: read it a chapter a night.
Public domain. Source text via Project Gutenberg, PG boilerplate removed. View the source edition