All William Ellsworth Hoy wanted to do was play baseball. After losing out on a spot on the local deaf team, William practiced even harder—eventually earning a position on a professional team. But his struggle was far from over. In addition to the prejudice Hoy faced, he could not hear the umpires’ calls. One day he asked the umpire to use hand signals: strike, ball, out. That day he not only got on base but also changed the way the game was played forever. William “Dummy” Hoy became one of the greatest and most beloved players of his time!
Nancy Churnin is the award-winning author of eight picture book biographies: The William Hoy Story: How a Deaf Baseball Player Changed the Game; Manjhi Moves a Mountain; Charlie Takes His Shot: How Charlie Sifford Broke the Color Barrier in Golf; Irving Berlin, the Immigrant Boy Who Made America Sing; The Queen and the First Christmas Tree: Queen Charlotte’s Gift to England; For Spacious Skies: Katharine Lee Bates and ‘America the Beautiful’ and Beautiful Shades of Brown, How Laura Wheeler Waring Painted Her World. Collectively her books have won a Sydney Taylor Notable, the South Asia Book Award, two Notable Social Studies Books for Young Readers, the Silver Eureka, the ILA-CBC Children’s Choices list, Junior Library Guild and more. A former theater critic for The Dallas Morning News, Nancy is a graduate of Harvard University, with a master’s from Columbia University School of Journalism. She lives in North Texas with her husband and a dog named Dog.
Jez is an illustrator based in Wellington, New Zealand. He’s done a lot of books and projects in the children’s publishing industry, and has occasionally dabbled as a character designer/concept artist for film and tv animation. When he’s not drawing, he enjoys reading historical things, cooking things, and the odd hike or two.
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