Beautiful Joe

A dog whose ears and tail were cut off by his first owner tells his own life in a kind household, and what he sees of other animals in the town. Marshall Saunders wrote it for a humane society competition in 1893, from a real dog she had met, and it became the first Canadian book to sell a million copies. The cruelty is described plainly because the book was written to change how people treated animals. Fifty-four paintings by John Constable and Eastman Johnson, from river paths and lanes to children dancing, accompany the story of a dog learning what a kinder world looks like.