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The horse-book is a literary genre which is considered very popular among young girls. Black Beauty (1877) by Anna Sewell is the very first horse-book and was therefore what started the genre. It is highly different from the horse-books of today which is what this paper looks at to see how the genre has evolved. This is done by comparing Sewell’s novel to Britta och Silver (1966) by Lisbeth Pahnke and Alla älskar Sigge (2004) by Lin Hallberg. This is done by looking at how these novels are alike and different from one another with connection to the horse and the human. And how it differs when the horse is the narrator as compared to when the human takes the narrating role.

In Black Beauty the horse is telling its life story and how humans treat the horse as some of the people in the novel are cruel towards horses. Many of the dangerous moments are caused by the humans being mean towards the horse. Whereas in the other books it is pure accident, the danger also mildens. In Britta och Silver there are mainly riding accidents but also a death incident where a horse dies. In Alla älskar Sigge the most dangerous thing that happens is that a pony gets so sick that it must go to the hospital where it is cured. These dangers getting milder is connected to how the genre is targeted towards a younger audience nowadays. In all three books there is also a clear boy-girl relationship between horse and human. The narrative makes how the human girl views the male horse sound like a description of a love interest. This makes the genre heteronormative. And with the narrative switching from the horse to the human there is also shown more of the human’s relations to one another and rivalry in the stable.