What Mike Mulligan's Steam Shovel Teaches 21st Century Kids

Last night I read Skin Again, a children's book by bell hooks. I remembered it after Heidi's presentation yesterday on multicultural education. The book encourages children not to look at a person's outside to decide who they are but to get to know the person on the inside. It teaches children that race is a societal construct. This made me think of the books I read as a child and what they offered to my education.

The character of Mike Mulligan came to mind. Virginia Lee Burton wrote the story about Mike and his steam shovel Mary Ann in the late 1930s, and the book celebrates its 60th anniversary this year. I was a child of the 70s, so why did it appeal to me? Was it because of Mike and Mary Ann's work ethic? Mike's loyalty to his machine? On a child's level, I remember being more impressed with Mike's friendship and loyalty to Mary Ann, a machine personified in my mind.

I wonder if Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel have something to teach us today. If I consider it in a contemporary context, it is a book about the role of technology in our lives. When new technological advances/tools are at our disposal, should we disregard the technologies they can easily replace? Should we throw away card catalogs and reference books now that we have Google and Wikipedia? Mary Ann proved that she was still useful to a society which had moved on to other technological advances, but in so doing, she forced herself into retirement by being unable to escape the hole she dug. Instead of dismantling and removing her, though, she was transformed into another useful machine which still continued to contribute to her society.