In mid-twentieth-century England, fourteen-year-old Velvet Brown, determined to turn the unruly horse she wins in a raffle into a champion, learns that she needs more than hard work and dedication to achieve her goal of riding her horse in the Grand National steeplechase.

When Sara Crewe is sent to Miss Minchin's school for young ladies, her indulgent father provides for her as if she were a little princess. But although her toys and clothes are the envy of the other girls, Sara's kindness and gift for storytelling soon win her lots of friends. Then, the tragic news arrives that her father has died penniless and, without wealth or a guardian, Sara is at the mercy of Miss Minchin. Forced to work from dawn until dusk...

In New England in the late nineteenth-century, a fatherless family, happy in spite of its impoverished condition, is befriended by a very rich gentleman and his young son.