Katie Mazeika is a children’s author and illustrator and an advocate for the neurodivergent and disabled. She is the creator of two nonfiction picture books, Beulah Has a Hunch! and Annette Feels Free. She is also the illustrator of three board books in the Chicken Soup for the Soul Babies series, and Is That the Bus? by Libby Koppanen. Her first fiction picture book, Maybe Just Ask Me!, hit shelves on April 22. PW spoke with Mazeika about how she started drawing and writing as a child, why she’s passionate about representing characters with disabilities, and what she wants everyone to know about the fallacy of being "normal."
Which came first, your love of drawing or writing?
As a kid, I loved to read and to draw. My favorite book growing up was Madeline by Ludwig Bemelmans. I liked it because I spent a lot of time in the hospital, and it was the only book I had read that had hospital scenes—and Madeline proudly showed off her scar!
If I wasn’t reading, I would be drawing. But it wasn’t until I was older that I realized that I was always trying to draw “perfect” little princesses. I had an art teacher who told me that we often put in our drawings who we want to be. I discovered that was why I was trying to make these perfect princesses, and it was very freeing.
In grade school, I fell in love with writing. I even won an award in fourth grade for a story that I wrote about my neighbor, Mr. Harry. He was so very kind to my brother and me, and let us help in his garden. I got to read the story in front of my classmates. It also appeared in the newspaper, and I was on the evening news, too! Winning the award was the first time I thought that I could be a writer, and I started to draw and to write.
How did you come to write nonfiction, including picture book biographies?
I got the idea from my first agent, my art agent, who thought I would be a good fit for nonfiction books and suggested that I do some portraits. At that time, it seemed like everyone was doing Frida Kahlo, but I wanted to do someone different. When I discovered Annette Kellerman, and started researching her life, the more fascinating she became to me. It was her disability and her attitude that drew me in. How her life was going in one direction –and then everything stopped and changed hit me in the gut. That’s because I know exactly how it is to grow up and have that happen, and an “if only” hanging in the background. I think a lot of kids who deal with an illness or a disability that comes on in their childhood experience these thoughts. But I believe you can change your mindset, and know that there's a “before,” and you can grow beyond that at some point.
Both Kellerman in Annette Feels Free and Beulah Louise Henry in Beulah Has a Hunch had their minds set on making the most of their abilities to achieve great things. Can you tell us more about them?
Annette didn’t let anything stop her. She wanted to be a classically trained dancer, but that was not to be. When she was six years old her legs became weak, and she needed leg braces to walk. While she couldn’t dance on land, she could dance in the water! She would go on to invent synchronized swimming, which became a new art form and Olympic sport. She also competed in swimming races vs. men in the U.S. and Europe. And, when her women’s swimsuit started weighing her down, she designed her own—and basically invented the one-piece swimsuit for women. It became known as the Kellerman suit.
As for Beulah, she was neurodivergent before anyone talked about it. But she was open about it. I found interviews in a magazine dating back to 1937 where she discussed having synesthesia and hyperphantasia. With only a finishing school education, she went on to develop more mechanical patents than any woman in history. It was just the way her brain worked.
In Maybe Just Ask Me!, you tapped into some personal experiences. How did this story take shape?
During my first Kindling Words retreat [for children’s book creators], a group of fellow authors and illustrators and I started discussing disability. Somehow, I began talking about when I lost my eye. Since I was a kid, people would stare at me in the grocery store, and parents would tell their kids not to stare. In response, my mom told me when I was little, “If they're asking nicely, you can tell them. But, if they’re being rude, you can tell them, ‘Bug off!’ ” I started sharing what all of this did to me as a kid—how it affected me that people were being told not to look at me. I realized that I had never really explored this. It wasn't until then that I really sat with it, and I started to think that I needed to write about it.
In the story, readers will see that my main character, Mazie, is the one who responds to the stares and the made-up stories and says, “If you really want the story of what happened to me, maybe just ask me!” She shows the kind of moxie that Madeline showed when she jumped on the bed [and revealed her scar]. I always wanted to do that as a kid.
I didn’t realize this until I was approving the image: if you flip it, the layout of both images is the same, just in reverse. Madeline faces right, and Mazie faces left. I think that it was my subconscious at work. It looks like she is showing her “scar.” It’s the only image in the book where she’s facing left, and her eye patch is all you see,
Writing the book brought up a lot of feelings and memories of my surgery, the months in the hospital, and the lessons my mother taught me. I can remember her sitting me down one day and saying, “Life is not fair, but we’ve got to move forward. We can’t harp on the hard things.” She would also say, “It doesn’t matter what you’ve been through, you can do anything! The sky’s the limit!”
What would you like your readers to take away from Mazie’s story?
Throughout my life, I have been fixated on “normal,” and how I wasn't “normal.” I would wear sunglasses whenever I could because then nobody would know me, and I could pretend that I was “normal.” That was my trick. I also lived with other issues with my surgery: I had nerve damage, and I had epilepsy, too. It was hard for me as a kid because I thought that there was some kind of “magical normal” and that was all I wanted to be. Now, I want to write and illustrate books so that kids can understand why they need to dismiss this idea because it doesn’t exist.
Can you discuss your focus on disability representation in your books, your author visits, and your talks with teachers and librarians?
While we are making progress, the Children’s Book Council’s numbers show that there are still primarily white, straight, nondisabled males and females in children’s books. We all know how powerful it is to see yourself in books: kids of different colors, religions, abilities, etc. So, that’s why I’m writing and talking about books with disability representation. With bullies running our world right now, we do not want or need another generation of bullies! One way to prevent this is to teach empathy and understanding of differences through diverse books. These are the books that will do just that.
Maybe Just Ask Me! by Katie Mazeika. Beach Lane, $19.99, Apr. 22 ISBN 978-1-66594-989-7
