“The other guys can tell about her,” Zack responded. “I want to finish the map.”
“It’s not too B-O-R-I-N-G?” Mr. C asked Zack.
“No,” Zack replied. “In fact, I love cartography!”
I nearly fell over, I was laughing so hard. Zack had found a new hobby. I hoped this one lasted longer than a week. “Well,” I managed to say between giggles, “if Zack’s staying, then so am I.”
“As long as you’re calling home, Zack, you might as well tell Mom I’m staying with you,” Jacob told his brother.
“I can stay too,” Bo said, asking if he could have the two-pole chain and compass. Bo would call his mom at work to let her know where he was.
Mr. C handed us back our equipment and team journal. He was thrilled that we’d decided to map the creek after all.
Being me, I had a few burning questions before we rushed off to do the project. “Mr. C,” I asked, “would we catch up with Babs Magee if we left earlier?”
“It wouldn’t make a difference.” Mr. C shook his head and nibbled on his lip. “Big Blue is programmed according to Einstein’s theory of relativity, which brings space and time together in a four-dimensional arrangement. On the other hand, your computer follows Sir Isaac Newton’s conception of a three-dimensional space as having the property of motion, independent of the frame of reference in which it is measured.”
I looked at him blankly. Jacob rolled his eyes. Zack yawned and said to me, “You had to ask, didn’t you?” Only Bo looked interested. But Bo always looks interested.
Mr. C revved up to continue. “Because wormholes are a handle in the topology of space, therefore—”
“Stop!” we all shouted at the same time. Mr. Caruthers laughed.
“Mr. C,” I asked, “are you trying to tell us that even if we left earlier, it wouldn’t make a difference?”
“Exactly!” Mr. C cheered, as if he’d made it all crystal clear. “Now you understand why you can only time-travel on Mondays. Obviously, Babs must follow the order of my list, and no matter when you leave, she will always arrive first. It has to do with the subtle differences in the way the two computers were created and because of the space-time continuum. You see—”
I gave up trying to understand and I interrupted his thoughts with what I hoped was an easier kind of question. “Why does Babs always wear a yellow coat and matching hat?” I asked simply.
Mr. C came back to earth and answered. “Yellow was always Babs’s favorite color. It’s a bright color that gets noticed. And that’s what she wants. You kids told me that her dream is to be famous. But we all know she’s going about getting there the wrong way.”
We left Mr. C muttering to himself about worm-holes and distortions of the space-time curvature.
Back at the creek, we were ready to map. We realized the first thing we needed to do was name the creek that ran behind our school. Just like Lewis and Clark had named Camp Fortunate after something good that had happened there, we wanted a name that reflected something good too.
The creek should be named after someone we admired. A true hero.
Zack opened our team journal, and there, on the first page, in big bold letters, he wrote: CARUTHERS’S CREEK. It was perfect.
Suddenly, I heard wild animal noises again: a growl. Scampering little feet. The chewing of crunchy leaves. A howl. And a loud, echoing roar.
“Did you hear it this time?” I excitedly asked the boys. They looked surprised because, this time, they definitely heard the sounds.
We all looked off into the shadows of the distant trees. Our animal spirits were watching us: a raccoon, an antelope, a coyote, and a mountain lion. They were guarding us. Protecting us.
And near them, we caught a final glimpse of Sacagawea’s spirit, come to say good-bye. It was the spirit of the Dreamer. A large brown bear.
A Letter to Our Readers
Hi. We hope you enjoyed Sacagawea’s Strength. Like the other Blast to the Past books, this story is a mixture of fact and fiction.
The fiction parts aren’t true. Even though you might know kids like Jacob, Zack, Bo, and Abigail, we made them up. Your teacher may be super cool like Mr. C, but we made him up too.
The story of Sacagawea, though, that’s a fact. Her life was recorded in journals by Captains Lewis and Clark and their exploration team, called the Corps of Discovery.
At age eleven, Sacagawea’s tribe, the Shoshone, was raided by the Hidatsa Indians. The Hidatsa kidnapped many people from the tribe. She was taken with them, far from her homelands.
At sixteen, Sacagawea was married off to a French fur trapper she didn’t know. His name was Toussaint Charbonneau. Lewis and Clark hired Charbonneau and Sacagawea to come along and work as translators. Two months after her baby, Jean Baptiste, was born, she strapped him to her back and went off with the Corps of Discovery to explore western America.
President Thomas Jefferson wanted the Corps of Discovery to find a river route across America from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean. There was so little known about the area, he needed them to write down information about all the people, animals, and plants they saw. President Jefferson also wanted them to make a map of that new territory.
Just like in our story, Lewis and Clark used very old, incorrect maps and corrected them. Sometimes they had the Native Americans who lived in the area draw maps with sticks and stones in the dirt. Or, if the Native Americans had small maps written with charcoal on animal skins, Lewis and Clark would trade for them, collecting them whenever they could.
They also brought along equipment to make maps on their own, including a compass, a sextant, and a two-pole chain.
It would have been difficult, but Sacagawea might have been able to quit and leave the expedition. When she discovered her brother was the Shoshone chief, many people wonder why she didn’t stay with her tribe instead of going on with Lewis and Clark. We wondered that too.
Maybe making a map was her dream after all?
We’ll never know. But what we do know is that Lewis and Clark would not have survived their journey without her. So, next time you look at a map, whether it’s a street map of your neighborhood or an SRTM map of Earth’s surface, take a second to remember Sacagawea’s strength.
Have a blast,
Stacia and Rhody
BLAST TO THE PAST in the next adventure:
#6 Ben Franklin’s Fame
“We are going to learn about one of the most famous people in American history.” Mr. Caruthers, the most amazing teacher on planet Earth, leaned back on the edge of his desk and folded his arms across his chest.
It was 8:05 and Mr. C had just arrived in class. Every Monday Mr. C is late. And totally messy. Today, his hair was sticking up. His suit was a crumpled disaster. And his glasses were falling off his nose.
Mr. C didn’t seem to notice his appearance. Or maybe he didn’t care. It is part of what made him so cool. Mr. C is super smart and also a little absent-minded.
We didn’t used to know why he was late and a mess, but now we do. . . .
Every Monday morning, just before school, Mr. C creates a time-travel cartridge for our History Club meeting. When he seals the lid on the cartridge, there is always a huge explosion. He says the time-travel cartridge doesn’t work without the explosion.
Why Mr. C doesn’t make the cartridges on a different day, or get up early enough to shower and change clothes afterward, I’ll never know. Maybe, like doughnuts, time-travel cartridges are better fresh.
“This American is so famous, everyone recognizes his name,” Mr. C said as he pushed up his glasses. “We’ll be studying his accomplishments all week.”
Usually, whoever Mr. C talks about in class is the same person we visit after school. Of all the kids in the third grade, Mr. C chose just Jacob, Zack, Bo, and me for History Club. The four of us are table partners and we take the responsibility very seriously.
“Who do you think we’ll meet today?” I leaned over and whispered to Zack while M
r. C paused to straighten his tie and run his fingers through his hair.
“Hmm,” Zack wondered aloud. “Someone so famous, we can talk about him all week . . . Maybe Elvis Presley?” He played a little air guitar and wiggled his knee under the table. “Wouldn’t it be rockin’ to visit the King?”
“Groovy,” I said with a laugh. Zack is the funniest guy I know. And, yeah, it would be cool to visit Elvis, but I didn’t think that’s who we were studying today.
I looked past Zack to his twin brother Jacob.
Jacob and Zack might look the same, but their personalities are totally opposite. Jacob is neat and clean and organized, whereas Zack is always a wreck.
Today Zack was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, with parts of his breakfast on the front. I could easily recognize syrup and chocolate milk.
“Who do you think Mr. C’s talking about?” I asked Jacob.
“Bill Gates would be my guess,” Jacob replied. “He’s ‘the father of modern computing,’ you know.” Jacob was wearing khaki pants and a T-shirt with a computer on the front. He really likes computers.
It was a good idea, but usually we only visit people who have been dead a long time. As far as I know, Bill Gates lives in Seattle.
Bo was sitting the farthest away from me at our table. He was wearing sweatpants and a long-sleeved gray sweatshirt. Bo’s real name is Roberto, but we call him Bo for short. I would have asked him who he thought it was, but Mr. C had cleaned himself up and was now pacing in front of the room, lecturing as he walked.
“The man we will be learning about was an inventor, politician, soldier, statesman, poet, ambassador, shopkeeper, bookseller, printer.” Mr. C stopped to catch his breath before adding, “Cartoonist, scientist, journalist, chess player, weight lifter, and he loved to read, too.”
Now I was certain it wasn’t Elvis or Bill Gates.
“Please get your textbooks,” Mr. C instructed. There was a rustling of papers as we all rushed to pull our books out from the little shelves under our desks.
When we were ready, Mr. C said, “Turn to page one-forty-four.” He paused, giving us just enough time to find the page number. “There, in the middle of the page, is a picture of an American legend: our famous forefather, Benjamin Franklin.”
Mr. C started searching for the correct page in his teacher’s guide, when Maxine Wilson’s hand flew up in the air. “Excuse me, Mr. C,” she interrupted. “There’s no picture of Ben Franklin in my book.”
Hands were popping up all over the classroom. Everyone was reporting the same thing: Ben Franklin was not in our textbooks.
Mr. C looked down at his teacher’s guide. He had a confused look on his face. I could tell that Ben Franklin wasn’t in there either.
Khoi Nguyen raised his hand and then informed him, “There’s a painting of some woman in the middle of page one-forty-four.”
“That’s odd,” Mr. C said as he stood tall and slowly wandered toward Khoi’s desk. “Just yesterday I reviewed my notes for this morning’s class.” Mr. C scratched his head, then pushed up his glasses. He glanced down at Khoi’s book. “I am certain that Ben Franklin is on page one-forty-four.”
I looked at my own page 144. I checked the number. And then double-checked.
STACIA DEUTSCH is the author of more than fifty children’s books. She loves to write adventure, mystery, and movie novels, but time-travel stories are her favorite. Just in case she gets the chance to time travel, Stacia keeps a long list of the people she would like to visit. For now she lives in California with her three children.
RHODY COHON wishes she could time travel too! Until her machine is in working order, she’ll travel through her imagination to wild and woolly places from her prickly home in Tucson, Arizona.
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Read all the books
in the Blast to the Past® series!
#1 Lincoln’s Legacy
#2 Disney’s Dream
#3 Bell’s Breakthrough
#4 King’s Courage
#5 Sacagawea’s Strength
Coming soon:
#6 Ben Franklin’s Fame
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com
This Aladdin paperback edition June 2014
Text copyright © 2006 by Stacia Deutsch and Rhody Cohon
Interior illustrations copyright © 2006 by David Wenzel
Cover illustration copyright © 2014 by Fernando Juarez
Cover design by Jeanine Henderson
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
ALADDIN is a trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc., and related logo is a registered trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
BLAST TO THE PAST is a registered trademark of Stacia Deutsch and Rhody Cohon.
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The text of this book was set in Minion Pro.
Library of Congress Control Number 2005930112
ISBN 978-1-4424-9538-8
ISBN 978-1-4424-9346-9 (eBook)
Sacagawea's Strength Page 6
