A Book to Read: POLONIUS THE PIT PONY by Richard O’Neill, illustrated by Feronia Parker Thomas
This picture book features Polonius, a pony who is forced to trudge through coal mines, working and sleeping underground. The pony escapes and finds Lucretia, a young girl with a traveling family. Her Grandad tries to take the pony back to the mines, but the horse-keeper doesn’t want him back.
“He won’t be any good for pit work now he’s tasted freedom.”
It’s a sweet little book if you’re trying to give young kids a tiny taste of the horrors of coal mining but you still want a happy ending.
The author was raised in a traditional nomadic Romani family, and he also has family members who worked in coal pits. Perhaps that’s why the book comes across as so heartfelt and authentic.
If you are looking for a middle-grade book on the horrors of coal mining, check out Natalie Lloyd’s OVER THE MOON, a fantasy novel in which a young girl’s brother was sent to the coal mines, turning his eyes and lungs gray. As with most Natalie Lloyd books, the immersive backdrop is a mountain town full of starlight and magic.
If you want a coal-themed book for adults, one of my favorites was A WILD AND HEAVENLY PLACE. Set in the late 1800s, this book starts in Scotland where our main character’s father owns a coal mine. He loses everything in a financial collapse and moves the family to the coal town of Newcastle, near Seattle.
If you are looking for an article about how a canary pin represents the struggle for economic and social justice in our nation, here ya go:
A place to explore: Big Brutus, just outside Pittsburg, Kansas
In addition to reading all these coal-horror tales, I have a staunch environmentalist for a Mother. Also, I viscerally remember the experience of breathing coal-spiked air when I was in China.
So perhaps it is no surprise that I never understood coal mining nostalgia.
I remember being puzzled about why US presidential candidates would go to Pennsylvania and promise to save the coal mining industry. Why would anyone want to save what seems like the worst jobs in the world?
Then I went to Pittsburg. Not Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Pittsburg, Kansas.
I was in Pittsburg to check out all the new places to eat, shop, and drink. My itinerary was focused on revitalization, new partnerships between Pitt State University, and the freshly painted downtown.
When I checked into Kansas Crossing Hampton Inn, the gal at the front desk LIT UP when I told her I was planning to write about traveling in Pittsburg.
“Are you going see Big Brutus?!?” she’d asked, a proud smile on her face.
I mentally flipped through my itinerary. No Big Brutus.
“What is Big…Brutus?” I asked.
The front desk phone started ringing. She ignored it.
“It’s the biggest coal shovel in the world,”1 she said. I think she actually put her hand over her heart at this point. “So many people around here used to work on it,” she said. “Including my grandfather.”
My own heart swelled a little, seeing the pride in her eyes, hearing the reverence in her voice.
“I’ll go check it out!” I promised.
How could I not promise?
Her face broke in a grin. Then she snapped back to work, answering her phone, scanning my room key card.
Meanwhile, I looked up directions to Big Brutus. It was a 20-minute drive out of town. I’d have to wake up an hour earlier the next day to squeeze it in.
So I do.
You can see Big Brutus from a ways away, rising up over the farmland.
Before heading out to see the biggest electric shovel in the world, there is a museum to walk through, full of paraphernalia lovingly donated by local families. The documents, buttons, and scrapbook-type mementos told the story of Pittsburg during its coal days. There were labor unions, strikes (one led by women!), Baltic immigrants, and socialism. The tiny town of Pittsburg, Kansas featured TWO socialist newspapers back in the early 1900s.2
There were pictures of overall-clad old men, bent with age, their hards proudly caressing the machines they used to run, back in the day. The museum features coal and everything related to extracting coal, but it sure doesn’t commemorate lung disease or pollution.
Mostly, the museum commemorated the history of HARD WORK.
Maybe being a coal miner and honoring coal mining is just about honoring those people who worked their tails off so their children and grandchildren could have a better life. Maybe it’s not the coal mining that people are nostalgic about, but just hard work?
I can totally get behind being nostalgic about hard work. Especially when seeing this sign, written in shaky old-man handwriting, hoping that the world will never forget his grandpa.
A lesson to teach: Natural resources Change Everything.
How communities use their natural resources is a hot topic for any Geography, History, Economics, or Social Studies teacher.
Some communities make money selling their resources, like Tulsa during their oil boom years.
Some communities refuse to sell their resources. China and the resulting Opium Wars is a good example.
Other communities leave their resources alone only to be exploited. King Leopold II killing 10 million Congolese for rubber profits is one of the more brutal examples here.
Often, communities use their own resources themselves. During the Industrial Revolution, London discovered the realities of air pollution as they got rich from coal powered factories. China is reliving this asthmatic-inducing hell today.
And sometimes, communities keep their resources secret. The vibranium in Black Panther’s Wakanda is my go-to example for this one.
No doubt about it, when people discover new ways to use natural resources, things change. I teach this concept to my students by having them draw a quiet little town. I give them a few things to draw (homes, a river, etc.) Then, natural resources are discovered in the town and everything changes. They have to add factories, roads, and stores to their not-so-rural town.
This is a pretty common simulation for teaching urbanization and/or the industrial revolution and there are a few similar lesson plans floating around the internet. Feel free to use mine! Give the students a big piece of paper, a pencil, and read them the following story/directions. Students love this activity. It’ll be a fun teaching day :)
Thank you so much for reading. May your week be full of new understandings and great books.
See ya next week.
It’s the largest electric shovel in the world
Gunn Powder by John Walker Gunn. 11/20/1913 - 1/22/1914 and Labor Herald by Sears and Leftwich. 3/3/1911 - 11/28/1913, continued by Worker's Chronicle by George D. Brewer and W. T. Sears. 2/6/1914 - 8/31/1923