Melodie A. Cuate

This book is a historical fiction written of an event in Texas history. The author makes Texas history interesting to high school age people by inserting modern kids into the events. These modern Austin school kids are transported to the past for an event, then back to our modern world.

At the time this book was written, the author had six books in the series which used this approach.

The modern children have typical modern personalities, one has a cellphone. The mechanism for transport to the past is a magic trunk that the young people come across from time to time. Every time they open it, they are transported to another past in which a historical Texas event occurred. So this is the sixth time the trunk is encountered and the sixth adventure to the past.

This approach is being used in the Magic Treehouse Series as well, by another author who is aiming at a slightly younger age audience.

The story occupies 166 pages of the 171 page book, appropriate for high school age young people but not for beginning readers. Numerous paragraphs mention cruelty by the Indians on their pioneer captives, and terror of Indians by those in captivity and other settlers being chased. So I would limit the book in its entirety to high school age kids.

Texas Archaeology Society has a very good reference with a title something like "From Dominance to Disappearance" that covers the Indian tribes in Texas through several centuries from just prior to the first European explorers through the end of the 19th century. In that book you can get the framework of why there was so much friction between Indians and settlers. This Plum Creek book does not set the framework for why captives were taken prior to the meeting in San Antonio at the Counsel House.

But a story of an event is not a story of the entire century so the author does a fine job with this one event. I thought it was interesting to read and may get a few more of the series.… (altro)