All Bernard Jones wanted to do while staying with his grandparents for the summer in Elmdale, his father’s childhood hometown, was work on his basketball skills. When Bernard excitedly enters a team into the Annual Elmdale Park Basketball Tournament, he’s shocked to discover that the future of the park is at stake. The town of Elmdale hasn’t won the tournament in 20 years, and Victor Franco, a ruthless millionaire, is planning to shut down the annual tournament for good so that he can turn the historic Elmdale Park into a landfill for his own profit. It can all be stopped if Bernard and his team, the Elmdale Warriors, win the tournament this year. Can the courageous Bernard and his fun and wacky crew defeat their Oakdale rivals and save the historic Park?

For over a decade Teko Bernard worked as a creative director and graphic designer in the sportswear and sports events industries where he developed brand identities, marketing communications and apparel graphics for nationally recognized brands and events like ESPN, X Games, NCAA and the BCS. After an exciting career in the sportswear and sports event market, Teko set out to pursue his lifelong dream of creating the original kid’s entertainment brand and cartoon property that is Elmdale Park. Elmdale Park currently produces a unique brand of middle grade chapter books & activewear. The Hoop Kid from Elmdale Park is the debut book from the brand. Teko lives and operates the company from Overland Park, KS, and collaborates with a team of seasoned writers, illustrators, editors and designers who all share the same passion for kids books, cartoons, sports and outdoor recreation. When he’s not designing or developing new story concepts for Elmdale Park, Teko is usually reading, listening to music, enjoying the outdoors or being an amateur movie critic.