By AJ Eversole

We’re excited to welcome award-winning author Kevin Maillard to Cynsations to share the vacation story that became a picture book, The Ones Who Came Before, illustrated by Sibu TP (Roaring Brook Press, 2026). From the publisher website:

A Native American “city kid” explores the idea of belonging and “who came first” after a surprising encounter with a country bear, from the award-winning author of Fry Bread.

Every year, Aabanya visits her grandfather Big Jimmy at his cottage on Early Mountain.

During the day, they gather corn, beans, and squash to make stew. In the evenings, Aabanya listens to her grandfather’s tales of the mountain and of Turtle Island.

When they venture into town, Aabanya feels out of place. The Earlies, a family who named Early Mountain generations ago, seem to look at her with questions in their eyes.

Who are you? Where are you from? Why are you here?

Her grandfather tells Aabanya that these are the very same questions her family and their people asked when the Earlies first came.

One night, Aabanya wakes to a scratch at her window and discovers… a bear! Fearful, she runs to her grandfather, who helps her remember that the bears… are the ones who came before.

Fry Bread was about food and family, and They Walk On answered questions of grief and hope. Now The Ones Who Came Before centers on the question “who came first?” What pulled you toward that question?

During Covid, I started spending summers in Vermont with my family. At that time, there was a lot of suspicion about outsiders—New Yorkers, in particular—moving to rural areas and changing the culture of the towns. We stuck out like sore thumbs in Vermont: we looked different, our car screamed “flatlander”, and we did not have the telltale green Vermont license plate.

Even within the state, there is vigorous debate on who counts as a “Vermonter,” with some believing that it is a multigenerational designation. By this definition, Bernie Sanders is from Brooklyn.

How much of Aabanya’s story is inspired by your own experience moving between Oklahoma, Manhattan, and Vermont?

Our first summer there, we had a family of bears that went through our trash, and being city people, we were quite alarmed. So scared, in fact, that we didn’t leave the house at night or wander in the field.

After the first animal visit, I called the local game warden to come and take care of “the terrifying black things in the yard.” He came to our house and very patiently explained that the bears had been there long before any people, and that we were actually in its yard. The best we could do was keep the trash cans in the barn and learn to coexist.

It was then that I realized that I had Karen-ed the bear! I had called law enforcement to remove something from its own environment, where it had every right to be. I had been struggling with a new idea for a picture book that summer, and after that encounter, I knew I had the book.

Big Jimmy and his stories of Turtle Island come alive in the book. Is his character drawn from a specific person or blend of people in your own family?

Big Jimmy is my great-great grandfather, the improbably named Jimmy Carter, a mixblood Creek citizen who enrolled as a Seminole Freedman.

He died long before I was born, but I wanted to honor him in the same way that I honored my grandmother (from a different line) in Fry Bread. I spent so many summers with relatives in the Seminole Nation as a child, leaving the city for the country just like Aabanya.

What do you hope young readers take away from this story?

I think that everyone understands the feeling of being the newest person to arrive, whether it is being the new kid at school, or starting a new job as an adult.

Over time, when we get used to a place, it becomes easy to forget that there are always people that came before you, and there will always be people after. The most important thing we can do is to listen, learn, and understand those experiences of the ones who came before, so we can make a better place for those that will come after.

How did the collaboration process work with your illustrator?

Sibu was great to work with. I gave him lots of pictures of our house, of my family, and of Seminole patchwork.

Working with an illustrator is a dialectical process. First, I write the words, then he comes up with the pictures. Although we each had our own contributions to bring this story to life, the final product is something in between.

I was floored by his spreads. He came up with entirely creative depictions that I would have never thought of.

He creatively uses reflective surfaces in the artwork every time a character is asked a series of questions: who are you/where did you come from/why are you here. It allows the characters to see themselves as others see them, as if the questions are being turned right back around, whether though the reflective surfaces of glass, plastic, or water.

“Who came first?” is a loaded question in a lot of Native contexts, dispossession, sovereignty, erasure. How did you make that theme accessible for young readers without flattening its importance?

I think almost everyone can relate to the feeling of being “new.” Whether this being the new kid in school or being the newest hire at a job. We all know those feelings of not knowing what to do, where to go, and so importantly, who to sit with at lunch.

It always feels like there is someone else that knows more, and we spend so much time thinking about our place in these new environments. Thinking about “who came first” is a question of perspective, because we sit on a continuum of existence in relation to our predecessors.

In Aabanya’s case, she visits her grandfather in his village in the mountains, and as the newest person in town, she feels like everyone is staring at her. The townspeople ask

Who are you?

Where are you from?

Why are you here?

These are the same questions that the Ancestors asked when the settlers first arrived.

Who are you?

Where are you from?

Why are you here?

And then when Aabanya encounters a bear at her bedroom window, she asks those same questions, only to discover that wherever we go, there will always be someone else that came before.

As an academic, do you see this book in conversation with your scholarly work, or do you keep the two professions separate?

They’re actually quite the same. I am a law professor, and my research has always focused on membership, identity, and the boundaries drawn to separate groups. I have studied antimiscegenation law and the rights of children, usually from an Indigenous perspective.

I have also covered these same topics as a reporter for the New York Times for over fifteen years in the Opinion, Arts, and Food sections of the paper. The topics are all the same—only the audiences are different.

You have written award-winning backmatter, what do you most want an adult reading aloud to know before they start?

Backmatter is an invitation to ask more questions. I always like to write books with several layers, and the backmatter provides an opportunity to explain them.

This book is about a girl, a bear, and a summer in the country. These are all classic tropes, most famously depicted in Robert McCloskey books like Blueberries for Sal and One Morning in Maine. I always loved those books, and they epitomized the wonders and freedoms of summer for me.

Books, films, and visual art give us all shared reference points for recognizing and confirming the reality of our experiences. We like to visit famous film locations and say, “this block looks like a Spike Lee movie” or “this field looks like Christina’s World.” And for Aabanya and Big Jimmy, their glorious summer in the mountains can become a shared experience, too.

You’re now three picture books into your author career. How has your approach or perspective shifted since the beginning?

The text is only part of the book. I’m always amazed at the number of people it takes to produce these things, like at the end of a movie when you watch the credits and there are hundreds of people involved.

There’s me, the illustrator, several editors, a typesetter, a designer, outside readers, publicists, school and library coordinators, reviewers, and kind people like the ones at Cynsations! It’s an entire team, and I enjoy how each of these contributors adds something different to the book, so that it becomes something much bigger and better than when I first wrote the words on a wooden desk in my studio.

What’s next?

Humor! I’d like to try some funny books with a dramatic child at the center.

Cynsational Notes

Kevin Maillard is Professor of Law at Syracuse University, a regular contributor to the New York Times and an author of children’s literature. He has written for The Atlantic and has provided on-air commentary to ABC News and MSNBC.

He is the author of Fry Bread: A Native American Family Story, a picture book illustrated by Juana Martinez-Neal, which won the Sibert Medal and the American Indian Youth Literature Honor, and the forthcoming And They Walked On (2025) and The Ones Who Came Before (2026). He serves on the boards of the Impact and Legacy Fund and the Institute for the Recruitment of Teachers at Phillips Academy. A fifth-generation enrolled member of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, he is based in Manhattan, New York.

A.J. Eversole is an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation and a writer of adult and children’s literature. Her work appears in Legendary Frybread Drive-In (Heartdrum/HarperCollins), a Michael L. Printz Award–winning anthology, Beyond the Glittering World, and Never Whistle at Night Part II (Vintage, 2026). She also reports on Native voices in literature for Cynsations. Find her online @ajeversole.