Mules that Fall from the Sky

How does one write about a book like Mules that Fall from the Sky? As adults, we often feel the need to shelter children from anything disturbing or difficult. I wonder, though, whether it’s because we don’t want to think about these things, rather than for any other reason.

Mules that Fall from the Sky is a collection of stories about animals during the war. Of course, having read Michael Morpurgo and others as a child, some of these ideas weren’t new to me. Yet, Mules that Fall from the Sky forces you to take off any remnants of rose-tinted glasses you may have and see things for what they were. What happened to animals during the war? How were they treated? What about dogs that were donated to the war effort? What happened to them?

This is not a book you can sit and read at one sitting simply because it is too distressing. Yet, I found myself wondering, would I have read it as a child? The answer is “yes”. I wanted to know these things. I wanted to know what happened to animals in zoos, as well as to pets when people were starving. Without glossing over anything, Nandini Nayar shows us a cost of war that one rarely talks about—what happened to animals in the care of humans. Heartbreaking but important, Mules that Fall from the Sky is a powerful read in a world where wars continue to be waged. It reminds us that human-caused wars do not affect humans alone, and if we forget our history, we are doomed to repeat it.