Belle, the Last Mule at Gee’s Bend – Calvin Alexander Ramsey & Bettye Stroud

A Civil Rights Story
Illustrated by John Holyfield
Candlewick Press, 2011
HC $15.99
32 pages
Rating: Wonderful/5
Endpapers: Deep Cranberry
Author’s Note
Illustrations: Acrylics – no white (happy sigh) – most pages have one side full illustration, opposite are text on soft “sponged” colors. Some double pages are ¾ illustration, ¼ text and one is a double page illustration with text across the top
Title page: Blue sky framed with trees and the corner of the general store.
Setting: Contemporary Gees Bend, Alabama
OSS: A young boy, while waiting for his mom to purchase a famous quilt from Gee’s Bend, learns of how the mule he’s watching came to pull the wagon that pulled Dr. King’s body down the streets of Atlanta to his funeral.
1st line/s: “Alex sat on a bench outside the store. He wanted to go and play, but his mother had told him to wait for her. There was nothing to do on the porch but an old mule eating in the garden across the street. There was no breeze. Not a leaf moved in the chinaberry trees. It was so still that Alex could hear the mule munching on a row of bright collard greens."
This must be used for MLK Day in January, with a few days preceding it learning about Gee’s Bend!