In the autumn of 1912, the football team from Carlisle Indian Industrial School took the field at the U.S. Military Academy, home to the bigger, stronger, and better-equipped West Points Cadets. Sportswriters billed the game as a sort of rematch, pitting against each other the descendants of U.S. soldiers and American Indians who fought on the battlefield only 20 years earlier. But for lightning-fast Jim Thorpe and the other Carlisle players, that day's game was about skill, strategy, and determination. Known for unusual formations and innovative plays, the Carlisle squad was out to prove just one thing -- that it was the best football team in all the land. Any football fans in the house? Art Coulson, a member of the Cherokee Nation, tells the true story of Native American athlete Jim Thorpe. In 1912, the Carlisle Indian Industrial School football team competed against the West Point Cadets in a symbolic game reminiscent of an earlier battle fought on the same land. This story celebrates Thorpe's determination and skill while educating readers about the problematic history of forced assimilation. An important book that provides additional resources in the back for curious minds. --Olivia Watson "Motherwell, How to help kids learn (and unlearn) about Thanksgiving" ...I think teachers can use in the classroom, and that every public and school library ought to have on the shelves. --"American Indians in Children's Literature (AICL)" Jim Thorpe was one of the greatest athletes of his era, a multi-sport athlete, adept at track and field, baseball, and especially football. Both Jim's Olympic experience at Decathlon and the Army versus Carlisle football game are detailed in this book... --"Pragmatic Mom" Art Coulson is an award-winning journalist and was the first executive director of the Wilma Mankiller Foundation in Oklahoma. His first children's book, The Creator's Game: A Story of Baaga'adowe/Lacrosse (Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2013), told of the deep spiritual and cultural connections of Indigenous American people to the sport of lacrosse. Art still plays traditional Cherokee stickball, an original version of lacrosse, when he is visiting friends and family in the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. Art lives in Apple Valley, Minnesota, with his wife and two daughters. After studying illustration at Maidstone College of Art in Kent, Nick Hardcastle was accepted on the illustration course at the Royal College of Art in London, and following his graduation he continued to live and work in London for 18 years. During that time he created illustrations for clients in publishing, advertising, design, architecture, and editorial work. Now based in Bridport, Dorset, which is on the famous Jurassic Coast, he continues to work for a wide range of high-profile clients in the UK and elsewhere. His more unusual commissions have included a series of illustrated panels on the walls of Wapping Underground Station in London and a drawing of the Royal Train for Intercity that was presented to the Queen and which resides in the library at Windsor Castle.