When Katie Mazeika began having children of her own, she noticed something missing from the books she was reading to them. Where were the characters that looked and felt like her kids—or like her?
“I felt like a lot of what I wanted as a kid, and what my kids wanted, in picture books wasn’t represented,” says the author and illustrator based in Cleveland, Ohio. Her son has autism, and Mazeika is neurodivergent and disabled.
“There wasn’t much out there for him, at that point. There was nothing [depicting my experience of being] a kid in the hospital,” Mazeika says.
So, she started writing and illustrating her own stories.
She published a children’s book based on her childhood, plus books about neurodiversity and the experience of being disabled. Mazeika wants to make sure children know there’s nothing scary or shameful about disability. Her favorite way to do that? Images. Characters. Art. Stories.
Mazeika published stories about Annette Kellerman, a disabled dancer who invented synchronized swimming, and neurodivergent inventor Beulah Louise Henry.
“Kids will ‘read’ the illustrations first. So as illustrators, it’s our responsibility to do our work and research and make sure that we are accurately representing disabled people,” she says.
Mazeika digitally creates her works in what she calls a “painterly and textural” style. She’s part of a web of award-winning children’s book artists across Ohio. Many are showing their work at the ongoing Story Art exhibition at the Art Academy of Cincinnati.
Featured artists from Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky spoke at an artist talk about their work. Though they are all book illustrators, their mediums range from 3D illustration to an acrylic-oil painting mixture. There are also pastel monoprints, paper collage, and watercolor.
“Everybody’s work is just amazing. These are really high-level, top-notch artists that are selling bestselling books, and they live right around us,” says illustrator and exhibition curator Jeff Ebbeler, who also teaches at the Academy.
He wants his art students to see what’s possible. Sure, they’re used to reading children’s books at bedtime. But to create comic, picture, and middle-grade books—let alone to have that art in a gallery—is something else entirely.
“I can see that light bulb in kids’ heads when they think that that’s a thing that people do that maybe they could do too,” Ebbeler says.
At the gallery, students (and the community) can see the sketchbook processes and intricate brushstrokes not always obvious inside bound books.
“I’m always pulling [children’s books] off the shelves to be inspired by this amazing art that’s in there,” Ebbeler says. “Some of it’s just fun stuff, but there are some stories that can hit you really hard, too.”
That’s tough to do in, say, 32 pages. But bound inside are infinite colors, relatable characters, and, hopefully, a memorable story told time and again.