What if a school’s mascot is seen as racist, but not by everyone? In this compelling middle-grade novel in verse, two best-selling BIPOC authors tackle this hot-button issue.

In Rye, Virginia, just outside Washington, DC, people work hard, kids go to school, and football is big on Friday nights. An eighth-grade English teacher creates an assignment for her class to debate whether Rye’s mascot should stay or change. Now six middle schoolers – all with different backgrounds and beliefs – get involved in the contentious issue that already has the suburb turned upside down with everyone choosing sides and arguments getting ugly.

Told from several perspectives, readers see how each student comes to new understandings about identity, tradition, and what it means to stand up for real change.

Best-selling author Traci Sorell writes inclusive, award-winning historical and contemporary fiction and nonfiction in a variety of formats for young people. She is a two-time Sibert Medal and Orbis Pictus honoree and an award-winning audiobook narrator and producer. Eight of her books have received awards from the American Indian Library Association. Other accolades include Jane Addams Children’s Book Honor Award, Charlotte Huck Honor Award, Septima Clark Women in Literature Honor Award, Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor, International Literacy Association’s Social Justice Literature Award Winner, and many Best-of and Notables lists.

In 2024, she shares two fiction picture books: Being Home, illustrated by Caldecott Medalist Michaela Goade, and Clack, Clack! Smack! A Cherokee Stickball Story, illustrated by Joseph Erb, along with board books On Powwow Day and Seasons ─ both adapted from previous works. A former federal Indigenous law attorney and policy advocate, Traci is a Cherokee Nation citizen and first-generation college graduate. She lives within her tribe’s reservation in northeastern Oklahoma.