Customer Reviews

Walk the World's Rim

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I read this story aloud to my children, and they were riveted. It is an incredible tale about the true journey of the four survivors (3 Spaniards, one African slave, Esteban) of the Spanish Narváez expedition to Florida, originally a party of over 300 men (or 400 by some accounts). The survivors were enslaved by various Native American tribes of the upper Gulf coast, but they later escape and eventually walk to Mexico City.

This book begins after the 4 survivors have escaped the hostile tribes, and are wintering with a friendly tribe of Avares Indians. They are making plans to continue their journey. The chief's 11 year old son, Chakoh, becomes their guide, as he develops a friendship with Esteban and is curious about the "Spanish God" that he believes resides in Mexico City.

The story vividly brings to life many Native American cultures, their struggles, and their complex relationships with other tribes and with the "hair faces". Issues of freedom and slavery are raised, as Chakoh is unaware Esteban is a slave for much of the book and continues to make scathing comments about "warriors" who are so weak they become slaves. Issues of greed are raised, as the prospect of gold and turquoise in Cibola make the previously cooperative Spaniards quarrel with each other.

This is probably a challenging book for an elementary student to read by him/herself, particularly if he/she has no real interest in Native Americans or Spanish conquests. It is an excellent read-aloud book particularly if done to enliven schoolwork and studies about that period in history. Readers can also do further research on Cabaza de Vaca and other historical figures in this story (Chakoh is apparently fictitious). Those who are willing to take the time to read this book will definitely be richer for it.

Spoiler alert: The ending is bittersweet, sensitive children will be disturbed by Esteban's tragic end (true to life). However, Chakoh eventually decides to leave the riches and comfort of Mexico to improve the lives of his starving tribe back home.

Betty Baker picked a difficult period of history to bring forth this fictional book. Early Spaniards explore America after a devastating voyage in which 4 survived out of 600. One of the four is a slave. Along the way, they pick up a young boy from an indian tribe to help guide them. His tribe is starving and he hopes to learn things which will help them later when he becomes the chief. The trail leads them from tribe to tribe and eventually to Mexico. He learns much about life outside his own village. He learns that his best friend is a slave, the lowliest of people in his own mind. Over time, he realizes that slaves can be honorable. The ending is somewhat sad. My 8 year old daughter cried. The book as a whole was well written and worth reading.

At first, I was worried that I would have a hard time "getting into" this book. However, I quickly came to love Esteban and the true story line. I read this book aloud to my children. We finished it today, and I cried through the last two chapters of the book. My 7 year old son cried with me, and my 9 year old son held back his tears -- which ended up giving him a headache. :) I love historical fiction. It helps bring alive the "dates and facts" we learn in basic history. My boys will never forget this story. Nor will I.

I read this story aloud to my children, and they were riveted. It is an incredible tale about the true journey of the four survivors (3 Spaniards, one African slave, Esteban) of the Spanish Narváez expedition to Florida, originally a party of over 300 men (or 400 by some accounts). The survivors were enslaved by various Native American tribes of the upper Gulf coast, but they later escape and eventually walk to Mexico City.

This book begins after the 4 survivors have escaped the hostile tribes, and are wintering with a friendly tribe of Avares Indians. They are making plans to continue their journey. The chief's 11 year old son, Chakoh, becomes their guide, as he develops a friendship with Esteban and is curious about the "Spanish God" that he believes resides in Mexico City.

The story vividly brings to life many Native American cultures, their struggles, and their complex relationships with other tribes and with the "hair faces". Issues of freedom and slavery are raised, as Chakoh is unaware Esteban is a slave for much of the book and continues to make scathing comments about "warriors" who are so weak they become slaves. Issues of greed are raised, as the prospect of gold and turquoise in Cibola make the previously cooperative Spaniards quarrel with each other.

This is probably a challenging book for an elementary student to read by him/herself, particularly if he/she has no real interest in Native Americans or Spanish conquests. It is an excellent read-aloud book particularly if done to enliven schoolwork and studies about that period in history. Readers can also do further research on Cabaza de Vaca and other historical figures in this story (Chakoh is apparently fictitious). Those who are willing to take the time to read this book will definitely be richer for it.

Spoiler alert: The ending is bittersweet, sensitive children will be disturbed by Esteban's tragic end (true to life). However, Chakoh eventually decides to leave the riches and comfort of Mexico to improve the lives of his starving tribe back home.

I read this book and enjoyed it greatly, but I think I may have gravely misunderstood it. The book wins high praise from home schoolers for its depiction of the difficulties faced by pre-agricultural Indians. The book depicts the Indian tribes of eastern and central Texas as chronically starving to death. It depicts a dry world, where people seasonally depended on the prickly pear cactus that in its season gave enough food, and I thought they were experiencing famine from severe drought.

Because I am taking part in a local eastern Texas debate on how to use our water, I looked into the book again overnight, looking for any citations of evidence of what life in Texas was like in a time of climate change. It is at this point that I realized that I misunderstood the book, which doesn't present a picture of drought or climate change, and depicts the Indians' lives very inaccurately.

On rereading I see that actually it describes the difficulty as caused by moving from place to place and depending on single food sources that were seasonally available in different places. We're told that food might be available but too far away to walk to get it. Thus it would make sense that the Indian boy stood to improve the lives of his people by bringing them agriculture. I had wondered how on earth bringing them agriculture would help them since there was insufficient water to grow food. From the book's description of the boy's thought processes about the Christian god, Christian ritual, and causes of the success of crops in Mexico, I thought maybe he thought the magical Christian god could cause crops to grow without water.

Positive reviews of the book understand the book to describe the difficulties of primitive living, not difficulties of living in Texas during an exceptionally dry period.

The book is misleading in several respects. I hope someone will educate me if I am wrong. I don't specifically know how Indians in Texas did live, and the book tells us that the Indians it depicts didn't have access to hunting buffalo.

First, I find no evidence of climate crisis in the American southwest, nor the southeast, in the early 16th century. Severe prolonged drought at the end of the 16th century did help to destory thriving agricultural Indian societies. I had thought that Aztec society may have been stressed before the Spaniards got there, so if anyone knows of reason to think there was severe drought around 1500, I hope they'll bring it up.

Moreover, and most importantly, hunters and gatherers in all times and all places have typically eaten a more plentiful and nutritiously balanced diet than that available to farmers, particularly farmers who did not have goats or cattle for milk. The boy did not bring goats or cattle back to his people. Land can support a higher number of farmers than hunters and gatherers, but farmers have always paid with their health and the need to work far harder for their food. The land where the boy's people lived is described in the book as too dry to grow crops without advanced irrigation at the very least. If this boy did bring back agriculture to his people he would have brought them worse problems.

The notion that Indians of Texas before the Spaniards brought Christianity were starving because hunting and gathering is so difficult appears to serve a Fundamentalist agenda of all life being very difficult for indigenous peoples until Christians arrived from Europe and saved them. Indeed, I was able to read this book because my sister had it, because she was home schooling her son last year, and this book was on that curriculum.

It also may not be true that Indians in Texas learned farming from Spaniards or from Spaniard-inspired travel to Mexico. Most Indians in both the southeastern and southwestern United States practiced agriculture at that time, and had done so for a long time, raising such crops as corn, tomatoes, beans and squash. Whether Indians in Texas practiced agriculture or not, they had seen other people doing it. Seeing agriculture didn't automatically mean adopting it, even where crops would grow; hunters and gatherers and farmers lived next to each other in Scandinavia and Great Britain from 5500 BC until 2500 BC. Also, I think that the Aztecs had a very wide trade network, so that the coming of the Spaniards didn't expose Texas Indians to Aztec civilization for the first time.

I read this book aloud to my children.

This is based on a true story, and it is about a 14 year-old Indian boy named Chakoh who has lived a very poor and hard life. In all of his years of existence, he cannot remember there ever being a time when he was not cold and not hungry.

Five Spanish ships sailed from Cuba to explore Florida in the summer of 1527. There were five friars aboard who hoped to convert the Indians to Christianity; the rest of the 600 men hungered for wealth. All but four of them died. For seven years, the four Spaniards - together with their Negro slave, Esteban - lived among the Gulf Coast Indians. They knew they would starve to death if they stayed with this primitive tribe of Indians, who barely survived on a near-starvation diet. They escaped and fled north into the unknown and unexplored territory of Texas. They eventually came upon the friendly Avavare Indians, Chakoh's people.

The four Spaniards told the Avavare Indians their plan to travel to Mexico, where banquets of food awaited them. The promise of food lures young Chakoh, and he wants to travel with the Spaniards and Esteban to Mexico. Esteban does not wish Chakoh to come along, for he fears that he will also be turned into a slave, a secret Esteban keeps from Chakoh. Esteban tries to convince Chakoh to stay with his people and with the life he knows, but Chakoh scoffs that there is nothing for him here - little food and no protection from the harsh cold winter winds. Chakoh sets out with the Spaniards and Esteban to Mexico.

I enjoyed the book, and I was surprised at how much my 9 year-old daughter enjoyed it even though the content was quite sombre. There is some sadness towards the end of the book, and Chakoh learns that things are not always what they seem. The book provides much food for thought and inspired a lot of discussion between my daughter and I.

MY RATING: 3 stars! My daughter gives it 5 stars - she loved it!

We had to read this book at school,and I absoultly hated it.I know half of the people who read this book will love it,and others may not. This isn't my style of book,but it taught some very important values to kids.

So please,don't respond to this flaming,but this book could not contain my attention half the time.Some parts were amazing,in which I was highly interested,but many parts dragging out for so long.

But overall for most this book is great,just not for me.

This is one of those books that I started reading to my children and continued on only to see if it would get better. After eight chapters, we finally gave up. It is just poorly written. The secondary characters are only briefly described, and unless it takes the entire book to get to it, the descriptions don't fit the characters' behavior. It would have been better to just leave the descriptions off so the reader would not have to be disappointed at the lack of character development. Both the dialogue and story line are choppy, and the emotional descriptions just don't seem to fit the conversations. The only reason I gave it two stars is that we cared enough about Chakoh and Esteban to at least keep trying for eight chapters, and because I did learn something about the Spanish treatment of the Aztecs. As a Catholic, I wish I could go back in time and keep the so-called Christians from their horrendous behavior toward the Aztecs. The Aztecs don't win any points for their own religion's treatment of their people, but the Spanish were violating true Christian teaching, even while using that religion as one reason to consider themselves superior to the Native North Americans. Mrs. Baker does mention that some Spanish leaders complained about the violence toward the Aztecs, and that there were consequences against the leaders who allowed such mistreatment, but even that could have come across more clearly if the book were better written.