Belle, the Last Mule at Gee’s Bend: A Civil Rights Story By
Calvin Alexander Ramsey and Bettye Stroud Illustrated by John
Holyfield On shelves now 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 m