Story & Pictures By
Join us for a free screening of Story & Pictures By, a documentary about picture books.
WOSU Headquarters
1800 N. Pearl St.
Columbus, OH 43201
Event description
Join us for a free screening of Story & Pictures By, the first feature documentary to take audiences behind the scenes to meet the authors and artists who create children’s picture books. The film follows Christian Robinson, Yuyi Morales and Mac Barnett — three bookmakers leading the new golden age of kids’ literature — as they create experimental work that reflects the mysteries of childhood, champion the marginalized and provide children with windows and mirrors, even when their own lives are not fairy tales. Through rare archival and untapped insights, viewers will also meet the first boundary pushers of the art form and understand why the classics still endure today. Classic children’s literature includes Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown, Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak, The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle, Stevie by John Steptoe and The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats.
Guests can enjoy light refreshments during the screening and win a special book bundle from an illustrator featured in the documentary. We hope you’ll make plans to join us!
Program schedule
The screening will start promptly at 2 p.m. Guests may arrive up to 15 minutes early in order to grab refreshments and find seats.
Following the 90-minute screening, Producer and Director Joanna Rudnick, Executive Producer Hallee Adelman and Dr. Jonda C. McNair, the Charlotte S. Huck Endowed Professor of Children’s Literature, will provide a 30-minute Q&A session for attendees.
Around 4 p.m., guests will have the opportunity to receive a copy of Hallee Adelman’s most recent picturebook After: A Survivor's Story, illustrated by Patrick Corrigan, and have her sign it at the conclusion of the event. After: A Survivor's Story received a starred review in Kirkus and was described as an “exceptional tool for navigating the unimaginable."
Film bios
Christian Robinson is an award-winning children’s book illustrator, author, animator and designer based in Oakland, California. He was born in Los Angeles and grew up in a small one-bedroom apartment with his brother, two cousins, aunt and grandmother. Drawing became a way to make space for himself and to create the kind of world he wanted to see. Christian studied animation at the California Institute of the Arts and later worked with the Sesame Workshop and Pixar Animation Studios before becoming an illustrator of books for children.
Yuyi Morales was born in Mexico and fostered a strong bond with the magical stories told and retold by her family. After migrating to the United States in 1994, she struggled with English and loneliness in a culture foreign to her but found solace in public libraries, where she read children’s books with her infant son and discovered a renewed interest in stories and art. Yuyi is now the author and illustrator of many children’s books, including the New York Times bestseller Dreamers, which won many awards and honors, and she is a seven-time winner of the Pura Belpré Medal for an outstanding work of literature for children that best portrays, affirms and celebrates the Latinx cultural experience.
Mac Barnett is the ninth U.S. National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, appointed by the Library of Congress and Every Child a Reader. He is a New York Times best-selling author of stories for children and a cowriter, with Jon Klassen, of “Looking at Picture Books,” a newsletter for adults about how picture books work. Mac’s work has been translated into more than 30 languages and has sold more than 5 million copies worldwide. He is also a cocreator, with Jon Klassen, of Shape Island, a stop-motion animated series on Apple TV+, based on their best-selling Shapes series of picture books.
Joanna Rudnick produced films for the American Masters series at WNET|PBS in New York City, where she coproduced the film Robert Capa: In Love and War, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2003 and was the presenting film for the 2003 Emmy Award for Outstanding Nonfiction Series. Joanna made her directorial debut with In the Family, a deeply personal story about coming to terms with having a mutation in one of her breast cancer (BRCA) genes. The film was nominated for an Emmy Award and was used to advocate for the 2008 Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) via a Capitol Hill screening and to publicize the dangers of gene patenting, an issue that eventually rose to a Supreme Court ruling.
Hallee Adelman is a filmmaker, producer and children’s book author in the Greater Philadelphia area, not far from where she grew up. Mixing her desire to imagine with a quest to explore and share, she became an elementary school teacher and earned her PhD in learning technologies from Drexel University, determined to unleash the extraordinary talents of her elementary and university students. She has also mentored student and adult writers, hosted community access days to The Franklin Institute science museum and chaired family events such as Swish for Schools and the Please Touch Museum’s Storybook Ball. She has authored multiple children’s books, including the award-winning Way Past Mad, Kirkus-starred Way Past Jealous and all the other titles in the Great Big Feelings series published by Albert Whitman & Company. With a love of story, Hallee cofounded World of HA Productions to support passionate filmmakers and develop impactful films, such as The Social Dilemma, Writing With Fire, Us Kids, The Truffle Hunters and our featured documentary, Story & Pictures By. She also codirected and coproduced the World of HA Productions documentary Our American Family, which is currently available on AMC+ and several on-demand platforms.
FAQs
Paid parking is available at the Ohio Union South Garage at 1759 N. High St. Limited paid street parking is also available along 14th Ave.
We encourage attendees to dress comfortably and appropriately for the weather.
The documentary’s runtime is just under 90 minutes.
Questions
Please direct questions to Sarah Bartlome at bartlome.3@osu.edu.