Description: Long before Mickey Mouse moved to Florida, the state was populated by the Timucua, a tribe of Native Americans who lived in the southeastern United States for more than 1,000 years. Written for kids -- and their teachers and parents -- who want to explore the Timucuan culture, this illustrated and interactive book leads readers on a detective's quest through 16th-century Florida.

Though Timucua speakers flourished in northeast Florida and southeast Georgia, no other historically accurate book about them exists for elementary and middle-school readers.

At the heart of the book, 47 "Detective Directives" invite kids to follow clues and conduct their own investigative activities: explore a trash midden, speak some of the Timucua language, plan a feast, even figure out how the Timucua hunted 25-foot-long alligators. When the mysteries are solved, the reader becomes a certified Historical Detective.

Each chapter has short informative paragraphs that allow readers to understand archaelogy and historical research and to practice language and reasoning skills. Starting 15,000 years ago with the Paleoindians, readers will march across the Bering Land Bridge, past glaciers, down to Florida, learning along the way how Columbus accidentally bumped into the the Americas and what happened when the Europeans arrived. Most of all, they will discover the Timucua -- and maybe even save an entire native culture from being lost forever.

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