To teach kids history, try time travel. Cuate, a veteran schoolteacher, spins the tale of a seventh-grader Hannah, her brother Nick, and her friend Jackie. They are intrigued by a mysterious trunk belonging to Hannah s new history teacher. When they open it, something magical happens, and they travel back in time to the Alamo, where the famous siege is underway. . . . Are they stuck in 1836 forever? Southern Living Hannah stared a second time at the crumbling fossil of a building before her. Her eyes opened wide. This was the same building as the wooden figure Nick had taken from her. This...

Nick is on a mission. Deeply troubled by the loss of a young friend at the Battle of San Jacinto, he wants desperately to return to the scene of the battle to alter history. But when he furtively opens the mysterious trunk, now in Mr. Barrington s attic, he is transported instead to Gonzales, Texas, in 1835. There he meets many historical characters, including the young Alamo defenders William King, John Gaston, and Galba Fuqua. (Will, Johnny, and Galba are introduced in Book 1 of the series.) Once befriended by them, Nick finds himself caught up in the excitement leading up to the Battle of...

Hannah followed Nick's gaze to gray stone walls. In the corner, the highest point on the horizon, stood a chapel with a bell tower topped with a cross. It was Presidio La Bahia. They were headed back to the fort in Goliad. On the top of the wall, seven soldiers aimed muskets toward the prairie and hills.

'Now don't change history while I'm gone', Mr B had said before leaving Hannah and Nick to lock the trunk in the classroom closet. Despite Hannah's pledge to comply, a trickle of beach sand and a slosh of seawater turn to a flood tide after she lifts the lid.

The cave at Mount Bonnell, not far from the school Hannah, Nick, and Jackie attend in Austin, has attracted many visitors over the years, from Indians to Boy Scouts to historic reenactors. But when Jackie s grandfather takes the trio there on an impromptu excursion, they meet a traveler of an entirely different sort: explorer Elijah Barrington ancestor of their formidable history teacher who has arrived there from the past. And accompanying him is a trunk that looks oddly familiar.A slam of the trunk s lid Translatorports the girls into a melee of swirling hoofbeats and bright war paint....

"Book Seven in the award-winning series for middle readers, a sobering window on slavery in Texas"
A struggle over a bowl of popcorn begins another time-traveling adventure for Nick, Jackie, and Hannah. When Mr. Barrington s trunk magically appears on the Taylors kitchen table, a family of slaves steps out, followed by a snapping dog. Jackie is mistaken for an escaped slave and kidnapped by a hideous man. Trying to save her, Hannah and Nick are transported back to June 1865 only to discover that even though the Civil War has ended months before, many Texas plantation owners still own...