Undefeated: Jim Thorpe and the Carlisle Indian School Football Team

One of Sheinkin’s main goals in Undefeated is to bring attention to the exploitation of Indigenous peoples in the United States. For this reason, the biography departs from the traditional sports genre narrative, which focuses mainly on an athlete’s achievements. While it would be possible to tell Jim Thorpe’s story in that manner, focusing only on the events of his life and highlighting his athletic achievements, this would come the expense of portraying his sociohistorical context, which is critical to understanding his story and the larger story of the United States at that time.

While Sheinkin focuses the narrative on Thorpe, the story of the Carlisle Indian School football team is just as important, making Undefeated more of a group biography than one that focuses solely on an individual. Thorpe’s story provides a context for the book’s themes of Resilience in the Face of Adversity, Sportsmanship as a Life Philosophy, and the Exploitation of Indigenous Peoples, helping Sheinkin teach middle grade readers about the United States’ problematic past in an approachable way.