The Knights of the Golden Circle were composed of various pro-slavery advocates throughout the Americas who were dedicated to bringing an expansion of the slave states into the Caribbean and Central and South America that they dubbed “the Golden Circle.”
Federal naval forces led by General Farragut took over New Orleans very early on in the war and the city remained in Union control the whole time. A city known for delicious food and a mix of cultures, New Orleans is considered the birthplace of jazz, which grew in part out of the second-line funeral tradition that Hannibal tells Magdalys about.
The Mardi Gras Indians are a New Orleans cultural tradition dating back to the nineteenth century, when black Americans wanted to honor the Native Americans who had helped them out during slavery. To this day, the different Krewes create brightly colored, feather-adorned regalia and parade through the streets of New Orleans on certain days of the year.
The Franco–Mexican War took place between 1861 and 1867. Conservative Mexican leaders sought help from imperial European powers when they were defeated in a democratic election by the left-leaning reformer Benito Juárez. The French sent troops and promised Mexico to the Austrian Archduke Maximilian. (In this book, he’s already there; in reality he didn’t arrive till 1864. The dinos got him across the ocean faster!) The Mexican army initially had success, repulsing the imperial advance on the city of Puebla in May 1863. (The holiday Cinco de Mayo is a commemoration of that victory!) But the imperial forces rallied and pushed through, conquering a succession of cities and then the capital, which sent President Juárez and his soldiers scattering. They kept fighting though, and eventually Juárez and his generals defeated the French and executed Maximilian.
The Battle of New Orleans was part of the War of 1812, but it didn’t happen in New Orleans or 1812! In fact, it took place in the nearby town of Chalmette. The battle played out much like Lafarge describes (minus the dinos), and was a stunning defeat for the British.
For more information on the Native people and history of this era, please see An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States for Young People by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, adapted by Jean Mendoza and Debbie Reese.
Of course, a lot less is known about dinosaurs than about Civil War–era United States. Because of this, and because this is a fantasy novel, I took more liberties with the creation of the dinosaurs in this story than I did with the history. Experts can make intelligent guesses based on the fossil data, but we don’t really know exactly what prehistoric animals looked like, smelled like, or how they acted. In the world of Dactyl Hill Squad, the dinos never went extinct, but humans did subdue and domesticate them as beasts of burden and war.
The tyrannosaurus rex is probably the most famous of the dinosaurs. It lived during the late Cretaceous Period and was known as the king of dinos. They were bipedal (meaning they walked on two feet), carnivorous (meaning they ate meat), and about as long as a school bus.
The brachiosaurus was a humongous herbivorous (meaning it ate plants) quadruped (meaning it walked on four legs). Its long neck allowed it to eat leaves from the tallest trees. It lived during the Late Jurassic Period and probably didn’t hoot the way the ones in the Dactyl Hill world do.
Sauropod is a general term for the gigantic quadrupedal dinosaurs with long necks, long tails, and relatively small heads. In the Dactyl Hill Squad world, they are used for transportation, cargo carrying, and construction.
As Magdalys points out, pterodactyls weren’t dinosaurs, they were pterosaurs, flying reptiles closely related to birds. They flew through Jurassic-era skies munching on insects, fish, and small reptiles. Generally about the size of seagulls, they weren’t really large enough to carry a person. A group of pterodactyls is not called a squad (although maybe it should be!) and scientists don’t suspect them to have been pack dependent as described in the book. But who knows?
Raptors were a group of very intelligent, bipedal carnivores. They had rod-straight tails and a giant claw on each foot, and they hunted in packs during the Late Cretaceous Period.
Triceratopses were herbivorous quadrupeds about the size of an ice cream truck that roamed the earth during the Late Cretaceous Period. They had three horns: one protruding from the snout and two longer ones that stuck out from a wide shield over their eyes that stretched out over their neck.
The diplodocus was one of the longest known sauropods and it roamed the North American plains toward the end of the Jurassic Period. It was over ninety feet long! Basically the size of a nine-story building turned on its side.
Pteranodons were large, mostly toothless pterosaurs without long tails. In fact, their name means “toothless lizard.” Quetzalcoatlus, the largest of pterosaurs, was big as a fighter plane — forty-five feet long. They ruled the skies of the Late Cretaceous Period.
Archaeopteryx, which means “Old Wing,” are considered to be the oldest form of bird. About the size of a raven, these Jurassic-era dinosaurs had sharp teeth, a long bony tail, and hyperextensible second toes called “killing claws.” Yikes!
Sinornithosaurs were Cretaceous Period birdlike dinos once believed to have a venomous bite, although experts now don’t believe that to be the case. They glided and hunted through the skies of what we now call China, and their name means “Chinese bird lizard.”
The parasaurolophuses were Late Cretaceous Period plant eaters that walked on both four and two legs. They had a long bony crest that extended from the backs of their heads.
Dimetrodons, also known as finbacks, were short, four-legged synapsids (creatures that roamed the earth forty million years before the dinosaurs) that were recognizable for the tall sails protruding from their spines. They are related to modern mammals.
Spinosauruses were large theropods that hunted the wetland areas of the Cretaceous Period. They had long, crocodile-like snouts, and the bony spines extending from their vertebrae were probably connected by skin to give a sail-like look.
The name tupuxuara is a reference to a type of familial spirit of the Tupi people of the Brazilian Amazon. Although the ones we meet in this book are very small, the tupus were actually large pterosaurs that roamed the South American skies of the Early Cretaceous Period.
The gallimimus was a long legged theropod dino that lived during the Late Cretaceous. They used their tail to balance themselves as they ran and are believed to be one of the fastest land dinosaurs.
The scutosaur, whose name means “shield lizard,” was not a dinosaur, but rather a large, four-legged parareptile with an armored hide.
In this messy, broken time of mass shootings and state violence, it’s important to note that guns almost always create more problems than they solve. More than that: Young people suffer with trauma from those problems in increasing and heartbreaking numbers. This is an adventure story, and it takes place during a war, in an era when folks were being kidnapped and sold into slavery and an invading rebel army threatened the nation’s capital. Guns are one of the parts of life in that time that I chose to include in this story, but I hope that a) the dangers, both physical and emotional, of gun violence ring loud and clear on the page, and b) we one day live in a time when gun violence doesn’t exist anymore at all.
Rifled muskets are enhanced versions of the old Revolutionary War firearms. The rifled muzzles gave these weapons greater precision, and their caplock mechanisms made them easier to load and fire than their flintlock ancestors. Rifled muskets, both Enfields and Springfields, were the most commonly issued guns on both sides of the Civil War.
Many rifled muskets were armed with a bayonet, a sharpened sword attached to the muzzle that could be used to stab an attacker.
The carbine is smaller and lighter than the rifled musket, with a shorter barrel. Because they are breach-loading, meaning you insert the bullets at the middle of the gun instead of into the muzzle, they are easier to shoot from horseback (or dinoback) and thus were favored by cavalry (mounted) units.
The Gatling is a multibarreled rapid-fire gun invented by Richard G
atling, a North Carolinian who, horrified that more soldiers died of disease than from combat during warfare, decided to invent a weapon that would “supersede the necessity of large armies.” Which doesn’t totally make that much sense and definitely didn’t work out that way, but hey … He sold his new weapon exclusively to the US Army, but it didn’t see too much action during the Civil War as it had only just been invented.
The howitzer is a short-barreled smoothbore mobile artillery cannon that could fire shells of twelve, twenty-four, and thirty-two pounds in a high trajectory. They were used as defensive weapons and to flush enemies out of their entrenched hiding places.
Thank you to superstar editors Nick Thomas and Jody Corbett!
Thank you to the whole team at Scholastic, who have been amazing throughout this process, especially Melissa Schirmer; Erin Berger; Amy Goppert; Lizette Serrano; Emily Heddleson; Erik Ryle; Rachel Feld; Shannon Pender; and Gavin Brown, Erika Scipione, and Fay Koh, who created the online Dactyl Hill Squad game, Rescue Run. It! Is! So! Awesome! Check it out at: kids.scholastic.com/kids/books/dactyl-hill-squad/.
Nilah Magruder always brings such vivid life to Magdalys and her friends, and it takes my breath away each time I get to see a new image of hers. Thank you, Nilah! And a huge thank you to Afu Chan for the terrific Dactyl Hill Squad logo and to Christopher Stengel for bringing it all together with such grace and precision.
To Eddie Schneider and Joshua Bilmes and the whole team at JABberwocky Lit: You are wonderful. Thank you.
Many thanks to Leslie Shipman at The Shipman Agency and Lia Chan at ICM.
Dr. Debbie Reese was once again terrifically generous with her time and wisdom and analysis. She gave detailed notes, and I’m deeply grateful. Her work at American Indians in Children’s Lit is always a crucial resource and necessary reading.
I was talking through some scenes with Jalisa Roberts and Brittany Nicole Williams one day. Brittany wondered if Café Du Monde had even been integrated yet back then — turns out it hadn’t and wouldn’t be for another hundred years — and Jalisa told me about Rose Nicaud, the original coffee seller of the French Market. Many thanks to both of them for those insights and all their help along the way!
Thanks to the brilliant writer, scholar, and friend David Bowles for his thoughts on the Mexico scenes and language.
Thanks to Dr. Laura Kelley! All incorrect historical or dinofactual matter is my own fault, and it’s probably on purpose, unless it’s in the back matter, and then it’s totally my bad.
Thanks always to my amazing family, Brittany, Dora, Marc, Malka, Lou, Calyx, and Paz. Thanks to Iya Lisa and Iya Ramona and Iyalocha Tima, Patrice, Emani, Darrell, April, and my whole Ile Omi Toki family for their support; also thanks to Oba Nelson “Poppy” Rodriguez, Baba Malik, Mama Akissi, Mama Joan, Tina, and Jud, and all the wonderful folks of Ile Ase. Thanks also to Sam, Sorahya, Akwaeke, and Lauren.
Baba Craig Ramos: We miss you and love you and carry you with us everywhere we go. Rest easy, Tío. Ibae bayen tonu.
I give thanks to all those who came before us and lit the way. I give thanks to all my ancestors; to Yemonja, Mother of Waters; gbogbo Orisa, and Olodumare.
Daniel José Older has always loved monsters, whether historical, prehistorical, or imaginary. He is the New York Times bestselling author of numerous books for readers of all ages: for middle grade, the Dactyl Hill Squad series, the first book of which was named a New York Times Notable Book and to the NPR and Washington Post Best Books of the Year lists, and the second of which was named a Publishers Weekly Best of Summer Reading; for young adults, the acclaimed Shadowshaper Cypher, winner of the International Latino Book Award; and for adults, Star Wars: Last Shot, the Bone Street Rumba urban fantasy series, and The Book of Lost Saints. He has worked as a bike messenger, a waiter, and a teacher, and was a New York City paramedic for ten years. Daniel splits his time between Brooklyn and New Orleans.
You can find out more about him at danieljoseolder.net.
Text copyright © 2020 by Daniel José Older
Art copyright © 2020 by Nilah Magruder
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While inspired by real events and historical characters, this is a work of fiction and does not claim to be historically accurate or portray factual events or relationships. Please keep in mind that references to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales may not be factually accurate, but rather fictionalized by the author.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available
First edition, June 2020
Cover art © 2020 by Nilah Magruder
Title treatment by Afu Chan
Cover design by Christopher Stengel
e-ISBN 978-1-338-26890-4
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