Certain historical figures inspire multiple generations of children’s authors to go a little hog wild and pig crazy writing up their lives for general posterity. The biography section of my children’s room, like many out there, suffers from an overabundance of Lincoln/Edison/Washington/etc. bios. Even utterly worthy folks like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. get a little overdone, causing one to wonder why folks even bother. Do authors keep writing about the same five folks because schools concentrate only on those people and therefore it is more lucrative to give them credit over and over again? How hard is it to find new takes on overdone cultural heroes? Enter Belle, the Last Mule at Gee’s Bend by Calvin Alexander Ramsey and Bettye Stroud. Shelved in the fiction picture book section of your local library, the book actually places the bulk of its attention on a true moment in history, little remembered in schools and textbooks. Though it is couched in a made up story, Ramsey and Stroud have found a way to give Dr. King’s legacy a new tale and take. The end result is a book that may straddle the line between story and truth, but there will be few who argue that it straddles the line between good and bad.
Alex is bored. His mom has dragged him along to Gee’s Bend so that she can buy a quilt, but while she’s doing so he’s stuck on an old porch with nothing to look at but an old mule chomping on somebody’s garden of collard greens. When an old woman joins him on the bench and introduces herself as Miz Pettway Alex inquires as to why the mule is allowed to eat all the greens it wants. She explains that Belle isn’t just any old mule. Back in the day when segregation was rampant Dr. Martin Luther King visited Gee’s Bend. After encouraging the residents to take the ferry the people find that the white folks in Camden across the river are so intent to deny the vote that they’ve closed down the ferry. Undeterred the Benders had their mules pull them along and around the river the long way. Later when Dr. King died, Belle and a mule named Ada were selected to pull his coffin along its funeral route. Of course state policeman tried to stop the mules from arriving, but when it was clear that there would be a national incident if the mules were not taken to the funeral, state troopers escorted the animals the rest of the way. That is why Belle, for all that she’s a mule, is important. As Alex himself says, “even an old mule can be a hero.” An Author’s Note explaining the true history of this incident alongside a photograph of the actual mules pulling Dr. King’s coffin, is included at the end.
Many is the children’s librarian who has picked up a work of historical fiction like this and encountered what can only be described as Needless Exposition: The Book. Let me describe it to you. In such a book a child character walks up to an adult and asks something along the lines of, “Grandpa what was World War II / Jim Crow / The Bay of Pigs?” (take your pick). Then the adult tells them what they want the reader to know and there you go. Instant book. Such stories don’t always make a lot of sense either. Oftentimes you’ll encounter a narrator who by all rights would have been told such
