Bringing Mazie to Life
by Katie Mazeika
When I began writing my picture book Maybe Just Ask Me! (Simon & Schuster, 2025), I thought it would be a piece of cake to create the main character, Mazie. After all, Mazie was me, telling my story. I already knew her. At least I thought I did. But as Mazie—and her story—developed I realized it wasn’t so simple. Mazie wasn’t just me as a little girl. Mazie was a combination of who I was and who I wished I could be when I was six years old. And as I look back, I realize that the character of Mazie had been waiting inside of me for years to speak up and tell her story.
I had cancer and lost my right eye when I was three. The bone around where my eye had been became infected and I was in and out of hospitals for many years. At one point, when I was five, I spent five months in Cleveland Clinic to have several different surgeries. That was the summer I discovered Madeline by Ludwig Bemelmans.
I fell in love with Madeline for being everything I wasn’t. She was bold while I was shy. She spoke her mind while I bit my tongue. But we were the same in a way that no other picture book character had been in all the books I’d read. We both spent time in a hospital, and we both had surgeries and scars.
My favorite part of the story is when the other girls come to visit Madeline in the hospital. Madeline doesn’t cover up or hide her scar under her pajamas—no, Madeline jumps up on the bed and shows it off! This made Madeline my hero. I wished I had the confidence she showed. But I observed the disability tropes in TV, books, and movies around me. The disabled character was usually the villain, the butt of the joke, or someone to pity. So, I became a kid who hid behind sunglasses. Until I took them off, no one knew I wasn’t like everyone else. But when I took them off, I knew what to expect.
Adults would slyly glance at me and quickly look away, but children would stare. Inevitably, a parent would step in and whisper for them to stop staring and look somewhere else. I understood; it was bad manners to stare, and even worse to say anything. It was polite to look the other way, as if I wasn’t there. The “nice” thing to do was pretend I was invisible.
I didn’t question this until I was a parent and watched my own kids navigate the stares. One day, my son introduced me to his preschool class with one perfect sentence: “This is my mom; she has one eye because she had cancer.” All questions were answered with that simple explanation: no stares or shy glances from kids trying to be polite. I was just another mom helping out at school.
But it took several more years for Mazie to speak up and make her voice heard. About four years ago, I was talking with some other book creators. Somehow the topic of kids being taught not to stare came up. I realized how weird it is that I am used to people looking away. Suddenly, something clicked. I thought back to my little kid self and realized that she experienced this every single day. She heard the adults say to look away. And she assumed there must be something wrong with having one eye, with being different. And my heart broke. That’s when I finally heard Mazie advocating for her story.
In the book, Mazie is me as a child. She is quiet and hopeful as she walks into a new school filled with potential new friends. And Mazie is who I wished I was when I was six years old. After feeling frustrated, she does find the courage, and Madeline-like moxie to claim her own story, and she speaks up for herself—something I was never able to do. Most importantly, Mazie doesn’t feel the shame I felt. She doesn’t feel the need to hide her scar or pretend it doesn’t exist. And she does it all without making the other kids feel bad about being curious. Mazie understands that by talking about our differences, we can find our similarities.
I hope that Mazie encourages other kids to talk about their differences openly and honestly. I hope that Mazie inspires bravery, because it IS scary to be vulnerable. I hope that Mazie encourages other kids to be open and kind and curious without being exclusionary. But most of all, I hope that Mazie awakens a bit of moxie for the kids like me who really need it.
Hear Katie Mazeika discuss writing Maybe Just Ask Me!
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Text and images are courtesy of Katie Mazeika and may not be used without express written consent.
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