Mentor's Katie Mazeika hopes to inspire with her children's book 'Annette Feels Free'

Oct. 7—Katie Mazeika took a long road to writing and illustrating her own children's book.

Although the Mentor resident and graduate of The Columbus College of Art and Design has provided the visual elements for books by other authors — including some in the "Chicken Soup for the Soul BABIES" series — she is responsible for all of the recently released "Annette Feels Free: The True Story of Annette Kellerman, World-Class Swimmer, Fashion Pioneer, and Real-Life Mermaid."

"I was a good writer; I was a good artist," she says of her childhood in Wyoming, Ohio, near Cincinnati. "In high school, I had no clue which direction to go."

Fortunately for her, a well-known illustrator, C.F. Payne, lived near her high school and one day spoke to her class about his career.

"I looked at that and said, 'Well, I can tell a story with pictures — you know, best of both worlds — so I'm going to go do that,'" she recalls.

Payne would become an advisor of sorts and eventually helped steer her to CCAD after a brief stint at Miami University, in Oxford, Ohio, where he was teaching a class.

After graduating, she landed in Northeast Ohio, where her mother grew up, living for stretches in Willoughby and Fairport Harbor. She did a bit of illustration work, including for what was then Lake Hospital System, she says.

However, being a mom took priority over work, especially with her younger of two kids needing extra attention. Also, her husband Chris' job took them away to New York state for a few years before they came back to the area and settled in Mentor.

When it came time to get back to building a portfolio, she took various gigs, including books for vanity presses, and was hired by Nomad Press, which produces books for school children.

However, her illustrated biography about Kellerman — who, after being forced to wear leg braces as a child in the late 1800s, became world-famous for swimming, as well as pioneering the women's one-piece swimsuit and even went on to appear in films — was released by Beach Lane Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.

"I came across her and sort of went down a rabbit hole," Mazeika says, adding that she became fascinated by her stories and with photographs of her. "She just had an attitude and she just ... screamed this confidence."

Mazeika found a kinship with Kellerman stemming from the fact that the illustrator, at age 3, lost an eye to cancer. She related to Kellerman's feeling of not knowing how to move forward at a young age, having the need for the leg braces when she was in the midst of being classically trained as a ballerina, Mazeika says.

"There's a photo of her dancing as a little girl, and I really enjoyed that," she says. I kept going back to it and just (thought), 'I know exactly how that kid felt."

Mazeika's interest in Kellerman, who found her destiny after her dad took her swimming, came as a result of her brainstorming of ideas. She talks them over with her agent, Sorche Elizabeth Fairbank of Fairbank LIterary Representation, whom she credits with a gift for knowing what will and won't appeal to publishers.

"She wanted me to do 'Annette' and (said), 'I think we need more than one picture book biography about a woman with disabilities,'" Mazeika says.

That helps to explain why among the other projects Mazeika is working on is a similar book about Beulah Henry. Nicknamed "Lady Edison" for her many inventions in the early 1900s, Henry received no formal training — she attended finishing school — but was awarded more patents than any other woman, according to Mazeika.

She is responsible, for example, for the collapsible umbrella handle, Mazeika says; although Henry didn't possess the technical know-how to make it, she was able to explain to someone who did tha she envisioned a mechanism similar to that of a telescope.

"She had what is known as hyperphantasia," she says. "She could see things perfectly in her brain. She could turn it around in three dimensions and work out how it would function."

However, Henry had to fight to be taken seriously even by those who cared about her because she was a woman, Mazeika says.

The author also is working on two historical/STEM books — one about Cleveland's Nela Park, once home to the National Electric Lamp Association, and another about the kit homes sold by Sears about a century ago. The components for the home, delivered by train, were numbered for assembly by the buyer.

"People would come together and put together these Sears houses for family members and friends," she says. "Even within two miles of the (Mentor) rail station, there are tons of them. They're all over Mentor."

All three coming books will be published by Beach Lane, she says.

Mazeika says she has enjoyed writing the books, adding that the typical guideline for a children's book is 500 words for fiction, 750 for nonfiction.

"It can be really hard to pick which 750 words (to use)," she says. "I like it a lot because it's a different part of my brain (from illustrating). When I write, it's like a whole different muscle. And sometimes when I've been drawing and painting for a very long time, I want to stop doing that for a while and write.

"It's a balance," she adds. "I love that I write and I illustrate because I know in my mind I have a finished picture, and I know that I can use words for some of it and images for some of it and it will come together."

Through her words and images, Mazeika paints a relatively full but easy-to-digest portrait of Kellerman's extraordinary life.

What does she hope young readers take away from it?

"From the very beginning, (the goal) was for kids with disabilities to have a hero with a disability — but also for kids without disabilities to have heroes with disabilities," she says. "If you know that ... you can have a disability and still do these wonderful things and be somebody's hero and somebody to look up to."

Katie Mazeika

Illustrated children's book: "Annette Feels Free: "The True Story of Annette Kellerman, World-Class Swimmer, Fashion Pioneer, and Real-Life Mermaid."

Pages: 40.

Cover price: $18.99.

Publisher: Beach Lane Books/Simon & Schuster.

Info: katiemazeika.com.