Introducing Our Authors and Illustrators

Jessica's dog, Clyde

Jessica Reaves wrote bark. run. nap. repeat. She has worked as a reporter and writer for nearly 15 years. Before joining the Chicago News Cooperative, she was with the Chicago Tribune, where she reviewed books and movies, wrote award-winning profiles for the Tribune Sunday Magazine and covered national news. In 2007, she traveled on an international reporting fellowship to Senegal and was named a Livingston Award finalist for her reporting on activists’ efforts.   

Before joining the Tribune, Reaves wrote for Time.com in New York, covering the 2000 presidential campaign and its extended aftermath, the Amadou Diallo murder trial, the 9/11 attacks, and the 2002 Olympic Winter Games in Salt Lake City. Early in her career, she reported for Ms. Magazine and wrote freelance pieces about international adoption law and euthanasia, the latter for Bill Moyers of PBS.   

Reaves has appeared frequently on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News and NPR.   

John Keilman started writing stories when he was 9 years old (his first was about a superhero named “Freedom Baby”). He kept going as he got older, and now he writes true stories for the Chicago Tribune newspaper. He is married to a brilliant wife, and has two adorable children, who like to hear tales about ninjas and princesses. Or princesses who are really ninjas.
“When you write a story, you create a world,” John says. “And you get to be the boss.”   

Stephen Ravenscraft won his first drawing contest in fourth grade. The bumble-bee bank prize was all ne needed to convince him to pursue his love of drawing as a career. Only once did he change his mind to pursue a different line of work – oyster harvesting, which would take him to a inspiring location off the coast of France. Instead, he landed in Chicago’s western suburbs with his beautiful wife and three fantastic children and one weird dog.  

Rick Tuma, of the Chicago Tribune,  has been drawing since he was a little boy. Mostly stick-figure army guys. Hundreds of them in big battles. In seventh grade he was in an art class with a very tall art teacher with a black and bushy mustache and very, very, very bad breath! He believed that Rick was an artist and told him that – it stuck! Thankfully, for Storybuilders. Rick collects hundreds of action figures, Happy Meal toys and comic books. He is married to a pretty lady with red hair. They have four daughters, one son and two little granddaughters.