John Meyers was raised on the Cahuilla reservation in Southern California. Despite their mutual respect for each other’s talents and their shared dedication to Native representation in baseball, the media was determined to pit them against each other. This picture book teaches important lessons about resilience, doing what you love in the face of injustice, and the fight for Native American representation in sports.Ĭharles Bender grew up on the White Earth Reservation in Northwestern Minnesota. The true story of John Meyers and Charles Bender, who in 1911 became the first two Native pro baseball players to face off in a World Series. She lives within her tribe’s reservation in northeastern Oklahoma. In 2023, she shares CONTENDERS: TWO NATIVE BASEBALL PLAYERS, ONE WORLD Series, a Kirkus Reviews starred nonfiction picture book biography illustrated by Arigon Starr, and MASCOT, a middle grade fiction novel-in-verse co-authored with Charles Waters.Ī former federal Indigenous law attorney and policy advocate, Traci is a Cherokee Nation citizen and first-generation college graduate. Other accolades include Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor, International Literacy Association’s Social Justice Literature Award Winner, Reading The West’s Picture Book Winner, and many Best-of and Notables lists. Her first five books have received awards from the American Indian Library Association. She is a two-time Sibert Medal and Orbis Pictus honoree and award-winning audiobook narrator and producer.

Best-selling author Traci Sorell writes inclusive, award-winning historical and contemporary fiction and nonfiction in a variety of formats for young people.

We are still here by traci sorell