Camel Express: A Story of the Jeff Davis Experiment by Olive Burt is one of the many books in the Winston Adventure series, “a series of tales based on the little-known incidents and nearly forgotten lives of unsung heroes that helped shape history.” Several of the characters in the book were actual people who were key figures in the so-called camel experiment.

Our main protagonist is Obed Green, sixteen years old, newly arrived in Texas at Matagorda Bay from a voyage on the U.S. Navy ship Supply to Turkey and North Africa in search of camels to purchase for the U.S. government’s use on the frontier. Obed goes as assistant to the ship’s veterinarian, Albert Ray, and on the way back Obed learns from the Syrian camel driver, Haj Ali (called Hi Jolly by all the Americans), how to care for camels, and even how to love and appreciate the ungainly and temperamental animals.

Yes, in 1855, Congress appropriated $30,000 to carry out a scheme of Secretary of War, Jefferson Davis, to purchase camels for use in the American desert. There’s a foreword in the book where Ms. Burt tells readers the history of Jeff Davis’ camel experiment, but let it suffice to say, the importation of camels to frontier forts was not a raging success. And then came the Civil War, and the camels were mostly lost or forgotten.

And that’s why, in one of my favorite children’s books from last year, we get a story-telling camel living in the wild in West Texas. Once Upon a Camel by Kathi Appelt is a fantastical story with anthropomorphized animals, and Camel Express is a western adventure story, so the two are very different in tone and genre. Nevertheless, I feel as if the two books would make a good pair, read together, and discussion would ensue. Just the idea of camels roaming the country of my birth, West Texas and parts west, makes me smile. If you read either or both books, let me know your smile quotient.