​Last December, just as I wrapped up work on the first children’s book I illustrated for another author, Gardenland: The Peas’ and Carrots’ Party Shake-Up, I was contacted by someone who wanted me to illustrate his children’s book. How exciting! This new author was the community & media relations manager of the Visalia Rawhide minor league baseball team, and he spotted my profile on The Society of Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI). He asked me to illustrate a book he had written called Tipper Takes the Mound, which told the story of how Tipper the Bull, the real-life current mascot, was trained to pitch at his first game as the mascot. 

However, there was a catch: since the book needed to be published before the start of baseball season, I had until January 31st to finish all fourteen illustrations, plus the front cover—just over a month. Gardenland was a year-long project with thirty-two pages, so knowing I had to do this again in a tiny fraction of that time sounded impossible. Yet as a relatively new illustrator who’s currently building rapport with authors, I needed to prove that I could meet client expectations without sacrificing quality.
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I met with the author over Zoom shortly after he first contacted me; one meeting was all it took to lock in the essentials to make sure our January 31st deadline was met. Already off to a great start! Unlike Gardenland, which included 12 characters with concept art, storyboards, a logo, font tests, endpaper art, and multiple rounds of revisions, the Rawhide already had a graphic designer handling text and book layout. That meant I only had to worry about character concept art and a single round of illustration revisions.

The concept art phase was much simpler than it had been on Gardenland, as instead of designing twelve characters, here I only needed three: Tipper the Bull, Chatter the Squirrel (the Rawhide’s former mascot), and the Rawhide manager. Since these characters and their world had to remain faithful to their real-life counterparts, the author sent me reference photos of the current mascot, the old mascot, and Valley Strong Ballpark- the Rawhide’s official baseball field. With Tipper, I had to keep as close as possible to his art in the team merch while still adapting him to my art style. With Chatter, his old mascot costume was rather bland, so I was given creative freedom for his design. I decided to lean into the wise old mentor who embraces an aging man aesthetic with glasses, baggy eyes, a gut-belly, chubby rodent cheeks, and an old baseball bat he uses as a cane. After a few minor tweaks from the author’s feedback, the designs were finalized before Christmas Eve.

I thus started the illustrations before the new year, and in that time tackled my lack of knowledge about baseball. My entire firsthand experience amounted to just three years of Little League from kindergarten to second grade. Not much time to research the sport! To quickly find a personal connection with this topic I knew so little about, I had to reference something I already loved: movies. Many baseball movies focus on the sport as a living relic of America’s history and future, wrapped up in hope and nostalgia. Think Field of Dreams, The Sandlot, and A League of Their Own. The baseball signed by Babe Ruth in The Sandlot is essentially a sacred artifact, so I filled Tipper’s world with similar memorabilia, like a signed home plate hung on the wall in Tipper’s barn. Films like A League of Their Own and 42 also use baseball as a lens for American progress, and Tipper Takes the Mound carries a similar spirit by Chatter handing the mascot title to Tipper as the team changes its name. To communicate this idea without saying a word, I symbolically portrayed it on the page of Chatter’s kitchen by putting an old gray Oaks baseball cap on a table beside a new red Rawhide cap.

Those moments of quiet visual storytelling are among my favorite parts of illustration, as they help bring to life the true meaning of the author’s story. My background in film and cinematography likewise aided me more in telling the author’s story by establishing the mood through cinematic lighting tricks. Perhaps my favorite use of this was the light radiating from behind Chatter as he makes his entrance to restore confidence in a nervous Tipper inside a heavily shaded barn.

Even while the tight deadline forced me to prioritize the more important storytelling elements in my work, I still made sure to have fun with my signature doses of funny details like in Gardenland. Giving Tipper my signature creative touch though was a bit different, such as an Abbot & Costello reference on a book Tipper was reading written by “Dr. Hu” (Who’s on first!) and red boxy text slapped onto certain illustrations with sound effects to add energy. One illustration enabled me to stretch my character design skills by including fifteen other bulls in the page where Tipper is chosen by Chatter to be the new mascot. Each bull has a different fur pattern, different clothes, and a different reaction to seeing Tipper get chosen over themselves. I could’ve easily drawn only Tipper and Chatter in that scene and called it a day, but I wanted to create something that would make people stop, look, and smile.

The coloring and shading process had to be a deliberate departure from my previous work. While Gardenland enabled me to go lush and colorful with a wet blender tool in Photoshop, with Tipper, I lacked the luxury of extra time. I decided to limit the color palette throughout the book to only three—red, gray, and tan—the colors on Tipper the Bull’s official team artwork, plus some green to the salads Tipper eats at the author’s request. Extra pops of green and blue were put on the cover as well to make a positive first impression. For shading, I swapped the wet blender for solid lines since it was quicker yet still gave the illustrations a strong amount of depth. Together, these constraints pushed me to find cleaner, smarter solutions that I can now carry into future projects. That includes drawing shadows, using reference pictures, finding inspiration from outside sources, guiding the reader’s eye with color, and more.

The greatest challenge of the project was recreating Valley Strong Ballpark, since the real thing is packed with fine details like tents, lights, and signage that had to be simplified just enough so the iconic field would still be recognizable. The buildings surrounding the real Valley Strong Ballpark though I did not recreate, as that would’ve taken too long, and it was better to instead surrounded the field with a forest of trees and a parking lot. Most of the illustrations on a good day took a single eight-hour workday to complete, but the Valley Strong Ballpark pages each took a few days to get done right.

From late February until the book’s official launch in April, the author toured many local schools alongside Tipper to do live readings of the book, with autographed copies gifted to the schools. Tipper Takes the Mound is now available at Visalia Rawhide’s team store, and in the local Visalia bookstore, The Book Nook. The finished product turned out far better than I imagined! The author told me that he and the others down at Visalia had nothing but great things to say about working with me. This goes to show that tight deadlines don’t have to mean compromised quality; they just mean you must be smart, flexible, and creative while cutting corners. When done properly, those cut corners can mean greater quality products and professional personal growth.

Trevor Pacelli is a young adult on the autism spectrum as well as the author of What Movies Can Teach Us About Disabilities, What Movies Can Teach Us About Bullying, Summer of the Fruit Virus and the illustrator of The Kindergarten Adventures of Amazing Grace: What in the World is Autism?, Gardenland: The Peas' and Carrots' Party Shake-Up, Tipper Takes the Mound, and the author/illustrator of Amazing Grace Goes to the Zoo.
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​Twenty-five years ago, a special animated movie based on a children’s book by William Steig premiered in theaters—one that wasn’t like any other pre-existing movie. Shrek introduced the world to a smelly, ugly, fat ogre of the same name who enjoys his filthy life alone in the swamp; he even learned not to care that everybody hates him and wants him dead. He’s continually the stand-in for anyone who received online death threats and was told by bullies, “No one likes you.” One of those who identifies with Shrek includes me. My previous negative social experiences, particularly during high school, made me want to imitate Shrek and put up a wall around my home so nobody could ever come in—friendship and family were just not worth the trouble. Even today as an autistic adult, I’ve become a victim of the modern loneliness epidemic and often genuinely believe I’m better off alone. Thus, Shrek, in this monumental anniversary year ought to be recognized as more relevant than ever.

2001 was the perfect time for this movie to be born, as movie theaters in the 1990s were ruled by the Disney Renaissance that featured princesses falling in love with dashing men they just met. Shrek didn’t embrace the clichés of fairy tales long associated with the Walt Disney company: Instead of a handsome prince rescuing the princess, it’s an ugly ogre. Instead of him mounting her on a noble steed, he’s accompanied by an annoying talking donkey. Instead of a beast turning human in the end, a human permanently turns into a beast. Instead of showing a beautiful young woman with textbook perfect outer beauty finding love, it’s a chunky green ogress finding love. Instead of expressing some of the most whimsical and colorful art styles that hand-drawn animation could offer, Shrek isn’t afraid to look ugly with CGI technology that was still in its toddler years.
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Beyond providing context behind Shrek’s subversion of fairy tale tropes, the cultural context of Hollywood in 2001 justifies why the movie’s success was such a big deal. Throughout the late 90s and early 2000s, other studios struggled to keep up with the new industry shift toward computer animation established by Pixar, and that included DreamWorks right from its founding in 1996. Shrek was the movie DreamWorks’ animators were sent to work on after they failed in the studio’s past projects, like The Prince of Egypt, and the original choice to voice the famous ogre, Chris Farley, died after recording nearly all his lines. Then once Mike Myers came on board to do the voice, he proposed to rerecord every single one of his lines because he wanted Shrek to have a Scottish accent rather than a Canadian one—while most of the animation was already done. Writers also came and left the project before finally settling on the first-time writers: Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jenson. At this point, the movie already looked like a guaranteed bomb.

Yet it did not bomb, Shrek surpassed all expectations to shift around Hollywood, pop culture, and misfit people suffering in an unaccepting world. Shrek’s representation of that suffering makes for a family film with an unusual take on bullying. Shrek became a bully because he was bullied by everyone who judged him before getting to know him. He even bullied Donkey, who only ever wanted to be Shrek’s friend. While on their journey to escort Fiona to Duloc, Shrek explained his deep insecurity to Donkey, including his intent to build a 10-foot wall around his land. Nobody with pitchforks and torches would chase him ever again.

The visual of a wall brings some tangible words for victims of bullying to help explain their predicament to others, and the movie uses the soundtrack to acutely nail the root behind that bullying: harmful messages from the media. The musical score is half Disney princess ballad and half greatest hits album, which couldn’t be a starker contrast to express DreamWorks’ opinions at the time about Disney. Right from the opening scene, that gentle sing-song score plays over the reading of a storybook, like the opening scene of a Disney princess movie, then Shrek rips a page out of it, and All Star suddenly plays to the opening credits. The song pulls the audience out of 1937 and into 2001 for a new kind of protagonist, one who breaks the mold and sees himself as a star. The rest of the songs, including My Beloved Monster, Hallelujah, and I’m a Believer, complement the sincere unspoken emotions of each character. The soundtrack was surely a big reason Shrek was so loved by audiences who needed a movie that could bring a voice to their insecurities.

A greater contributing factor for the film’s appeal to this day is its tremendous technical achievements in animation, especially for such a new studio. The 1990s ushered in the first fully computer animated feature film, Toy Story, which brought Shrek the tools to deliver something that could resonate with an entire generation. It took three years to animate this film, with a year of that process spent on perfecting Princess Fiona’s look. The character models were also developed with muscles and bones underneath their skin to aid in creating those realistic bodily movements, and it helped achieve realistic human movements three years before The Incredibles. Humans obviously weren’t the only challenge, the animators also had to create believable movements for a donkey, a dragon, a puppet, mice, dwarves, and more. If managing these details on just one character is hard enough, imagine doing the same for shots of massive crowds—like the big dance scene at the very end! That’s an insane amount of work despite the clear technical limitations of the time! This doesn’t even consider the other tricky elements to animate in the environment, like mud, water, and fire. The animators’ labor of love on every character resulted in high levels of expression that made them relatable, empathetic, and lovable.

The first ever Best Animated Feature Oscar was awarded to this monumental movie thanks to the production crew’s labor of love, amazingly over Pixar’s hit from that year: Monsters, Inc. The “DreamWorks brand” that this movie launched in turn influenced other animated films that defined the 2000s, not just the other popular DreamWorks films like Madagascar or Kung Fu Panda, but all other films by animation studios in that decade—even Disney. Once studios made it past the awkward transitional stage from 2D to 3D animation, favorites like Frozen and Moana were made—both of which had mostly human casts and more progressive stories that subverted fairy tale tropes.

Nearly every computer animated movie that exists nowadays utilizes the benefits of this technology to delve into more mature messages about self-love, which is perhaps the greatest legacy that Shrek has left for the world. Since 2026 is a year where millions of people have put up walls of isolation to shut out those with differing opinions, humanity, now more than ever. can learn from this beautifully filthy movie that brought hope over the past twenty-five years.

Trevor Pacelli is a young adult on the autism spectrum as well as the author of What Movies Can Teach Us About Disabilities, What Movies Can Teach Us About Bullying, Summer of the Fruit Virus and the illustrator of The Kindergarten Adventures of Amazing Grace: What in the World is Autism?, Gardenland: The Peas' and Carrots' Party Shake-Up, Tipper Takes the Mound, and the author/illustrator of Amazing Grace Goes to the Zoo.

Like many people worldwide, I’ve had a fear that the plague of AI, which continually taints emails, social media, online shopping, books, art, therapy, and even doctors, could someday lead to fewer or even no jobs left for humans. AI is everywhere, particularly on social media taking over Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. What especially disgusts me is the YouTube channels that are made fully by AI, including religious content creators making videos entirely with ChatGPT, which risks spreading lies people could buy into.
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Being an author and illustrator, I see AI affecting children’s books as well, with Amazon being flooded by the ugliest book covers you’ve ever seen—many of which are generated by an AI prompt. The people responsible for these don’t seem to care about the art of writing or illustrating, or the buyers they’re fooling. I wish they cared about supporting the work of real authors and illustrators, but it seems to be only about the money. In my personal research on how AI can be used to work for me rather than in place of me, I have found four fun and responsible ways to use AI: 

1. Photo Editing
As someone who enjoys photography, both for leisure and volunteer work, I could benefit from AI during the photo editing process. Photoshop has a feature called Generative Fill that can simply remove objects from a photo, replacing them with more natural looking elements like grass, rocks, or trees. On an AI platform like Adobe Firefly, a simple prompt could brighten a specific uploaded image, straighten it, give it a warm tint, brighten a specific area, or make other edits. It can be even more creative, in ways like generating an image of scratches against a black background, turning the background transparent, and using the image as a layer to make a photo look old.

2. Photography Tests
Besides photography, my journey of exploring AI’s potential has included graphic design, particularly when previsualizing a finished product for a client. Perhaps a photographer might want to see how a photo taken in broad daylight would look on a cloudy day or even change the direction of the lighting. Multiple images can then be generated with different types of lighting and different directions the light’s coming from to help plan out a photoshoot. (My mind was blown when I discovered this.) A photographer could also see how a photo would look with a filter applied to look like an old photograph before applying those edits via Photoshop. Graphic designers, likewise, can test a logo for a company by typing in multiple different prompts that a client could easily look at and provide feedback on before production begins. Even for personal use, one could ask AI to generate a birthday invitation with a specific description to gain inspiration before creating the invitation themselves. Though it shouldn’t be used to replace actual photography or graphic design, just to previsualize an idea.

3. Design Options
I enjoyed playing around with this, as I got to essentially play the role of a designer or even someone looking to redecorate their home. A hair stylist could take a headshot of someone, then type in an AI prompt to give the person a certain hairstyle so the customer could easily decide whether they want to go with that look. The same can be done by changing the color of someone’s shirt in a photo, changing their makeup, or even changing what they’re wearing entirely, to aid fashion and costume designers. Put these two together, and AI could help a bride and her bridesmaids decide on their dresses, hair, and makeup for the big day in a fraction of the usual time. The interior decorating industry can similarly benefit from this practice, by providing options to help a client decide what type of carpet or wall color they want.

4. Illustration Previsualization
As an artist who’s worked with authors on their children’s books, this is the point that I personally see the greatest benefit from. If working on a commission for a client, an artist could utilize multiple approaches to test out different looks for the illustration that a client could then provide feedback on. A file of an illustration, one without any color, could go through an AI prompt requesting for it to be colored in a specific way and in a specific style. A completed illustration could also go through a transformation process, like making a watercolor painting look like it’s made with oil paint or changing the scene’s time of day. An artist about to create an illustration could likewise type into an AI prompt exactly how they’re visualizing the finished product, which can help inspire the artist’s use of colors and lighting for the art piece.
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While learning about AI, I have tried not to be hopeless about our future as people rely more on its convenience and efficiency, especially as its technology continues to improve. My discoveries about the potential behind AI give me hope that our world can still preserve heartfelt work. We don’t have to live in a time when AI runs every step of production in social media content, written files, recording audio, customer service, or what have you. We can live in a world where AI is used for quality-of-life tasks like quickly summarizing long documents, recording audio of meetings to take notes, and finding recommendations for movies, restaurants, shopping, travel, or housing. Background tasks like debugging, coding, translation, and revision feedback are also strong uses for this new technology. Yet really, I feel that the key to mastering our relationship with AI is to not treat it like a human relationship; people are there for bouncing ideas off one another to create something great. AI can facilitate the interaction, but hopefully will not replace it. 

Trevor Pacelli is a young adult on the autism spectrum as well as the author of What Movies Can Teach Us About Disabilities, What Movies Can Teach Us About Bullying, Summer of the Fruit Virus and the illustrator of The Kindergarten Adventures of Amazing Grace: What in the World is Autism?, Gardenland: The Peas' and Carrots' Party Shake-Up, Tipper Takes the Mound, and the author/illustrator of Amazing Grace Goes to the Zoo.

1. Structure the ceremony to showcase the nominees

The ceremony is currently notorious for being unstructured and disorganized. The only categories that get properly showcased for their work are the acting nominees (sometimes), best original score (maybe), and best original song (based on who the producers feel like allowing to perform). There’s so much more they could do. For instance, the best costume design nominees could have a fashion runway show that displays their work. The commentator could then give some bits of trivia on the design process of each costume. The best production design nominees could likewise show behind-the-scenes footage of building the sets. The cinematography nominees could have a montage showcasing the beautiful shots from each film. The sound nominees could be interviewed to explain their challenges recording audio and creating the sound effects during postproduction. Think of the possibilities this could bring in creating a fun ceremony that celebrates the art of film!

2. Encourage audience participation

Oscar prediction ballots are already prevalent on many sites, which is great, and it can be a fun game when everyone making predictions knows exactly what they are predicting. But as things are nowadays, the prediction game doesn’t matter if most people haven’t even heard of the nominated films and shorts. One big reason people are unfamiliar with these movies is because the movie theater is dying—the Oscars refuse to embrace that streaming is now the dominant way to watch movies, and that the glory days of making an event out of going out to a movie theater are never coming back. Maybe the Academy could create a streaming platform designated for watching all the Oscar nominated films and shorts from the past and present—imagine, Oscars+! This streaming platform could even feature original content—the nominated actors, cinematographers, VFX artists, etc. explaining how they did their work. It would be so fascinating for anyone to see and would be an easy way to engage interest from people by speaking at their level.

3. Nominate the right movies

BoxOfficeMojo says that 2025’s top 10 highest grossing movies without any Oscar nominations are: A Minecraft Movie, Lilo & Stitch, Superman, Wicked: For Good, The Fantastic Four: First Steps, and How to Train Your Dragon. Of the other four, Zootopia 2, Avatar: Fire and Ash, Jurassic World: Rebirth, and Sinners all got nominations (and Sinners broke the record for the most nominations for a movie ever, sixteen). Rather, seeing all ten of these movies nominated for something would get more people interested in seeing who wins, depending on their public reception. For instance, A Minecraft Movie currently sits at 48 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and 5.6 on IMDb, so its awards recognition should be limited to supporting technical categories, particularly for its visual effects, score, and song. Whereas Zootopia 2 and Superman, while not necessarily great movies, were financially successful and had good ratings across the board, which is enough to say those should be prioritized in getting nominated in most categories. It would be way more exciting to watch if there were thirteen nominations given to Superman instead of some poorly reviewed French movie seen by basically nobody.

4. Ban the campaigns

Movies nowadays get recognized for awards if the studios behind them invest millions of dollars in campaigning for voters. Actors and producers may also scream for the voters’ attention, whether by sending personalized letters, hosting private screenings, paying other A-list celebrities to endorse them, or by sending voters DVD copies. This doesn’t sound so bad? Well, look at Shakespeare in Love. This dreadfully mediocre movie has become hated for beating Saving Private Ryan for best picture, and rightfully so, mainly because the aggressive campaign was led by… get ready for this… Harvey Weinstein. Not only did he invest millions of dollars in screenings, parties, and press, but he also campaigned AGAINST the competition by insisting that people only liked Saving Private Ryan because of its first fifteen minutes. The strategy from this Hollywood monster paid off, and producers to this day follow the same strategy in campaigning their movies for awards. So yeah, Oscar campaigns can be rooted in Hollywood evil and should not be embraced.

5. Limit the acceptance speeches

Celebrities, of course, love to use their chance with cameras aimed at them and the whole world watching to say whatever’s on their hearts, which unfortunately means often they preach about their political opinions. One of the worst cases included the 1973 ceremony when Marlon Brando won best actor for The Godfather and instead sent Native American activist Sacheen Littlefeather to address Hollywood’s mistreatment of American Indians. Although she and Marlon Brando had a point, this wasn’t the place or time to do it. Even without any political talk, the winning actors’ speeches can still be extremely insufferable. Last year, when Adrien Brody won best actor, he broke the world record for the longest ever Oscar acceptance speech at five minutes and forty seconds! Seeing how the producers let him ramble on about nothing while other winners in other categories were cut off by music and abrupt cuts to commercials is unbelievably insulting. Everyone in every category deserves the same amount of time for their acceptance speeches, at maximum two minutes. At that point, the microphone should then be automatically cut and the orchestra automatically made to play as the winner’s cue to leave the stage.

6. Change the presenters

The celebrities coming onstage with an envelope in hand to announce the next winner of the next category often first make painfully unfunny jokes aimed only at the other celebrities in the theater; the people at home usually don’t get the context. Not to mention that often the presenters are allowed more screentime than the winners of the “lesser known” tech categories get in their acceptance speeches! So maybe the presenters shouldn’t be celebrities? That makes sense; after all, it’s not like people at home have been itching all year to see these famous faces. They can see them all the time online! There have been attempts to personalize these win announcements, as the presenter would talk from the stage directly to each nominee, making the presentation feel more personal. Honestly, it would be far more memorable to just watch a sample of the nominees’ performances and understand why they were nominated, and even just have Price Waterhouse Coopers announce each winner. After all, they counted the votes, they brought in the envelopes, why not have them also read from the envelopes?

7. Get a funny likable host

The Oscars have a bad reputation already, and every awards season is controversy stacked upon controversy, and much of that weight lands on the shoulders of the host. Now, the ceremony does not NEED a host, and they have proven before that they can function perfectly fine (and perhaps even better) without a host. But if a host truly is necessary, the selection process of who to host should be carefully considered. Some of the most disastrous Oscars hosts ever, like James Franco and Anne Hathaway, Seth MacFarlane, Amy Schumer, Regina Hall, and Wanda Sykes, had no standup comedy skills, or their jokes were just too tasteless and mean-spirited for no reason. It would be great if the host was an actual professional standup comedian, like Chris Rock, but other great hosts could include Gabriel “Fluffy” Iglesias or certain actors known for their comedic roles. Such actors who are liked by the public and already gained the reputation of being funny might include Kristen Wiig, Amy Poehler, Tina Fey, Ryan Reynolds, and Jack Black. Without a likable face to attach the Oscars to, the viewers at home would never willfully tune in to watch.

Conclusion

If the Academy Awards invested their efforts to structure the ceremony around showcasing the work of all the nominees instead of time-wasting jokes and skits, then the show could finally entertain the average viewer. If an online streaming service was offered by the Academy to make all the nominees in their entire history accessible, then the nominees of the past and present would become more widely discussed around the water cooler. If prioritization was placed into nominating the more successful movies rather than the more pretentious Oscar-baity movies, then more people would willfully watch the show. If studios stopped campaigning for the voters’ attention, then the list of nominees would be more varied and honest. If more action was taken to limit the acceptance speeches, a greater variety of audiences would find appeal in the many aspects of film being recognized, and the acceptance speeches would no longer be insufferable to sit through. If the presenters were Price Waterhouse Coopers instead of other celebrities, then the show would move by more quickly with less painfully unfunny jokes. If there was a host holding the show together who knew what they were doing, then more people would not only want to watch the show but have a great time. Once these changes are implemented to bring the Oscars back into the present day, then the show can finally be exciting again for more people, while honoring the well-deserved achievements in film that’ll guarantee a golden future for Hollywood.
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Trevor Pacelli is a young adult on the autism spectrum as well as the author of What Movies Can Teach Us About Disabilities, What Movies Can Teach Us About Bullying, Summer of the Fruit Virus and the illustrator of The Kindergarten Adventures of Amazing Grace: What in the World is Autism?, Gardenland: The Peas' and Carrots' Party Shake-Up, Tipper Takes the Mound, and the author/illustrator of Amazing Grace Goes to the Zoo.

By Trevor Pacelli
​What’s Christmas all about? Since I grew up in the Christian church, I was taught that the holiday is about celebrating Jesus’ birth, even though history doesn’t always agree. For starters, Jesus wasn’t born on December 25th and many traditions, like tree decorating and mistletoe, originated from a pagan festival called Yule. Even for some who aren’t Christians, thinking of Christmas as a religious celebration is a humbling reminder not to get caught up in the commercialism, and that message is why so many people love A Charlie Brown Christmas. However, other widely loved Christmas specials assign different meanings to the holiday. How the Grinch Stole Christmas! implies that it’s about singing together, whereas Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer says it’s just about the toys. Figuring out the purpose of life is a massive reason certain stories, including these three Christmas classics, leave an impression on so many of us. Here are six Christmas-themed feature films I think do the best job in presenting a strong reason for the season:

​To anyone who’s been through a dark place and thought suicide would be the only way out, It’s a Wonderful Life proves why life is worth living. For the first two-thirds of the film, the plot progresses naturally as the events shown in George Bailey’s life naturally demonstrate through actions rather than words how his character changes over the years, particularly regarding his relationship with Mary. Then the film brings everything together beautifully throughout the last third as George goes from a mentally torn wreck to the happiest man on earth, all by seeing how everything seen in the film’s first two-thirds would’ve been worse off had he never been born.
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So what does It’s a Wonderful Life say about Christmas? The final scene presents a strong case behind why this holiday at the very end of the year should be important for all of us. When George’s loved ones save him from an inevitable prison sentence, it could’ve easily been a deus ex machina, but since George was ready to accept his fate no matter what happened, he learned his lesson. Not to mention his friends coming to compensate for his $8,000 that was lost was a result of all the good deeds George did for them. He had sacrificed his dreams of exploring the world to work at the family business, and it was worth it. It’s a Wonderful Life ultimately concludes that Christmas is about taking the time to remember your blessings, about what made your life so wonderful.

Director Jon Favreau’s version of the North Pole in this modern-day Christmas classic is based on the Rankin/Bass Christmas TV specials, with even the elf costumes perfectly replicating Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’s elf outfits. The music likewise contains those delightful vocal “bum-bum-bums” that you’d hear in the world of Rankin/Bass, and when the movie’s setting progresses to New York City, the soundtrack sustains its yuletide aura that reflects Buddy the Elf’s contagious Christmas spirit. So many movies in the 2000s were set in New York, played on the “outsider” jokes, and revolved their plot around a workaholic father, but Elf is among the few that made all these tropes work together, as they each felt done with purpose and payoff. That, and the movie’s just naturally super funny.
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So, what does Elf say about Christmas? Well, it’s helpful to remember the cultural context of when the movie came out. The 9/11 attacks happened only two years earlier, so having a movie like this where an outside source comes to the Big Apple to rekindle the lost joy of the people working through the busiest time of year was just what America needed. Say what you will about the messy climax, but it beautifully brings together everyone Buddy met while at New York and satisfies all their arcs at once as singing together revives their lost Christmas spirit. Elf ultimately concludes that Christmas is about taking time to remember to stay happy amidst your busy soul-sucking existence.

​Now, none of these motion pictures are wrong about what Christmas is about. Heck, one of the epiphanies I’ve had recently about Christmas is that there’s no definite reason for the season. This yuletide time of year should mean whatever is significant to you, and you can figure that out by considering which Christmas specials you enjoy most. That’s what art is about- it helps you better know yourself. If you enjoy Christmas because the traditions draw you close to Jesus, that’s wonderful. If you see Christmas as a family time, that’s wonderful. If you see Christmas as a time to reflect on the past year, that’s wonderful. If you see Christmas as a spark of joy during the gloomy winter months, that’s wonderful. If you see Christmas as a time of year to buy loads of decorations, then as long as you stay out of debt, that’s wonderful.

Trevor Pacelli is a young adult on the autism spectrum as well as the author of What Movies Can Teach Us About Disabilities, What Movies Can Teach Us About Bullying, Summer of the Fruit Virus and the illustrator of The Kindergarten Adventures of Amazing Grace: What in the World is Autism?, Gardenland: The Peas' and Carrots' Party Shake-Up, and the author/illustrator of Amazing Grace Goes to the Zoo.

By Trevor Pacelli
​Wow. Thirty years of Toy Story. To this day, it’s one of those movies that nobody seems to dislike, while the second installment is perhaps more loved than the first with its deeper narrative that expands further on the premise of toys coming to life. The series eventually received a third and fourth part, gave Buzz Lightyear a (rather phoned-in) spinoff, and next year, in 2026, Toy Story 5 will come out. To commemorate the legacy of this iconic series, I think now is a good time to look back on what made Toy Story so appealing to all ages.

Now, I was way too young to notice the cultural impact of Toy Story when it first came out around Thanksgiving in 1995, as I was only about to celebrate my third birthday. I didn’t know what it was like for everyone to see the first fully computer-animated motion picture, I just know that everyone instantly loved it not for its technological achievement, but for its fun characters and clever story. It also helped that real toys from our history were included both in the background and in the main cast: Mr. Potato Head, Slinky Dog, Etch-a-Sketch, the Barrel of Monkeys, the Green Army Men, the Troll dolls, the Little Tikes, just to name a few. The parents had fond memories of playing with toys like these, and triggering those sentimental feelings helped hook them when they took their kids to see it.
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Yet a greater help in making the first movie a hit was the main protagonist—our very own Sheriff Woody. Some behind-the-scenes details reveal how difficult it was for Pixar’s writers to get Woody just right, as throughout much of the development process he was just a big bully who pushed the other toys around. A bit of that is still seen in the finished product, as Woody lets his leadership position over the toys in Andy’s room amplify his jealousy whenever his status as Andy’s favorite toy is threatened. He does try to take malicious action against Buzz when he’s confident Buzz really has replaced him as Andy’s favorite toy, but it goes disastrously wrong when his plan to knock Buzz behind the desk instead ends with Buzz getting knocked out the window. Even when the other toys accuse him of trying to permanently get rid of Buzz, Woody is more worried about his own reputation with his friends than about Buzz’s safety. Indeed, he starts off as an incredibly selfish character, but because his actions stem from the very real insecurity of feeling inferior, old, or outdated, Woody becomes lovable.

His development throughout the first movie takes place when he and Buzz are stuck at Sid’s house and they have no choice but to work together. At first, Woody’s motive to bring Buzz with him is just for the practical reason of getting the other toys in Andy’s room to no longer hate him, but once he must talk sense into Buzz—who realizes by then he’s not a space ranger, Woody’s empathy for Buzz becomes sincere. Woody tells Buzz that unlike space rangers, toys get to enjoy the privilege of having a kid unconditionally love them, but as he tries to uplift Buzz with his words, Woody in turn brings himself down, believing that Andy doesn’t want a plain old toy like him anymore. Though Buzz pulls Woody back up by the bootstraps so they can work together to get out of Sid’s house and race over to Andy’s moving truck that by then has hit the road. At the start of this chase, Woody is even given a choice while on the back of Andy’s car to leave Buzz stuck in a fence, but he decides to go back and help Buzz out of the fence, leaving Andy’s car to drive off. Once this chase is over and they’re both safe in Andy’s arms once again, Woody and Buzz continue their newly established friendship that’s expanded on in the second movie.

Toy Story 2 doesn’t just expand on Woody and Buzz’s friendship, it also expands on the concept of what it would be like if toys came to life, showing toys living inside a store, toys stuck in storage, toys becoming collectibles, toys being put in yard sales, toys being shelved, toys meeting newer versions of themselves, toys breaking, and most importantly—toys leaving their owner. The story’s main events kick off when Andy accidentally rips Woody’s arm, which leads to him being left on a shelf while Andy goes to cowboy camp. Woody fears what could possibly happen between him and Andy… Would he be better off preserved in a toy museum than having to put up with having his heart and stitches broken by Andy over the years? Hearing Jessie’s story of being forgotten and given away by her owner seals the deal for Woody: Being played with isn’t worth it.

Pixar’s writers were insanely clever in how they came up with the natural problems toys would worry about, all of which relate to the common human insecurity of change. Toys are scared of birthdays and Christmas, as that means new toys could potentially dominate the owner’s playtime. The toys are also scared of yard sales, as that means they could be put up for sale. Needing to adjust to such big changes like these are not a whole lot different than kids moving up to a new grade level, teens leaving for college, or parents letting their kids go off to college. For anyone going through such a period of life, Buzz’s words to Woody are an important reminder of what’s important: “You are a toy!”

Buzz is repeating the same words Woody screamed at him in the first movie, and this time in the context of reminding Woody of his purpose. Like any average person’s fears about the inevitable transitions in the future, it’s paramount to remember their purpose and commit to it, no matter how hard it will be, just like what Woody had to do in deciding to return to Andy. Then once he’s home safe, Woody feels happy knowing that while the heartbreak with Andy and future owners is inevitable, it will be fun while it lasts.

What’s also funny is the fact that the whole reason why Pixar decided their first movie should be about toys is more from a practical production reason. The technology wasn’t yet ready to create something like monsters, fish, rats, or cars, as they demand overly complicated effects like fur and water, but it was serviceable at the time in creating smooth plastics. Since much of what took up the screen in the first two films was plastic toys, it worked in selling audiences over to the potential of this new approach to animation. Pixar’s animators back then remarkably understood the limits of their technology, and found genius ways to hide the limitations, such as by leaving out toys covered in fur, cutting away from actions too difficult to animate, or shooting human characters mostly from a distance. At the same time, Pixar never made showing off the computer animation the focal point of the movie, they kept their priorities right and only did for the film what was right to tell the story about toys.

So, the next time you watch the Toy Story movies, consider how their timeless topics of friendship and growing up influenced you over the years. How might your favorite character reflect your inner child? What would you want to see today’s kids pull out of watching these movies? How has your society improved how you live, work, and play because of what was established by Toy Story?
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Trevor Pacelli is a young adult on the autism spectrum as well as the author of What Movies Can Teach Us About Disabilities, What Movies Can Teach Us About Bullying, Summer of the Fruit Virus and the illustrator of The Kindergarten Adventures of Amazing Grace: What in the World is Autism?, and the author/illustrator of Amazing Grace Goes to the Zoo

2D art in general is a medium I lately have found a whole new level of appreciation for as an author and illustrator. Watching the old Disney classics gave me the chance to admire the animators’ and background artists’ techniques used to exploit everything live action could never achieve, as Walt Disney was always a forward thinker with technology. Before Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, he made the first cartoon with synchronized sound (Steamboat Willie), the first fully technicolor cartoon (Flowers and Trees), the first cartoon to use storyboards (The Three Little Pigs), the first cartoon to attempt realistic human movements (The Goddess of Spring), and the first cartoon with the multiplane camera (The Old Mill). Walt ultimately strove to prove that the medium of animation can become not just a roadshow attraction but a complex storytelling medium, which helped me better understand my ideal approach to digital illustration.

My childhood hobby of drawing already found room to grow with these cartoon drawing tutorial books I had as a kid, but turning this into a profession in book illustration was a different story. Photoshop was my medium of choice in drawing so I could easily make changes to a work, which meant viewing the multiple layers in Photoshop like the pre-digital age of animation when production cels were used to put together a single frame. Photoshop requires me to keep track of separate layers depending on outlines, color, shadows, or special effects (like creating a transparent layer that simulates glass). While the story of a certain movie or picture book may be shallow with some questionable messages, any artist would benefit from studying how the most acclaimed Disney films achieved their animation effects.

My growing appreciation for Disney’s technological prowess when the studio was at its best goes along with my newfound appreciation for how the Disney brand tells stories. Disney’s California Adventure for instance has a plaque in Buena Vista Street (the land where you first enter the park) that says, “Storytellers: We are just getting started.” -Walt Disney. How appropriate, seeing how this quote sums up the Disney parks’ mission statement! Consider for a moment how many storytelling mediums exist in the world: movies, music, lights, sound, production design, food, etc, Disney parks contain them all and much more!

I previously wrote about how I traveled to Disneyland on my own, and how that trip helped me overcome my challenges surrounding autism. So now, I get to go again this March as my sister and her husband invited me and my parents to join them on their upcoming Disneyland trip. Besides the time I’ll get to enjoy with the family in my favorite vacation spot in the world, I’ll get to experience the joy of seeing my four-year-old niece and one-year-old nephew have fun at this park that’s ready to tell meaningful stories for the new generation.

On a more personal note, I found that this can be my chance to apply what I learned from my recent trip there to help them plan their trip through a written itinerary. I could help lay out a plan for what restaurants to make reservations and which attractions each of us want to ride or avoid, which we can plan around the youngest child’s naptimes and when we can split the group up to go on different attractions.

For instance, my brother-and-law and I want to ride the Incredicoaster, but since the others wouldn’t want to ride it, they could instead take the kids on a gentler ride. The seven of us could enjoy rides together as well, particularly Pirates of the Caribbean and certain rides that would bring us the joy of seeing the kids’ excited reactions to riding, like Dumbo the Flying Elephant. The meet-and-greet character times are also things we’ll need to keep an eye on, so my niece could see certain characters like Anna, Elsa, Ariel, Belle, or Mirabel. Knowing how to lay this plan out for the trip opened my eyes to how my autistic special interest in Disney parks serves as my advantage, making this another way aside from drawing and illustrating that Disney has helped me amidst my autism.

So sure, you can still be pissed that Disney decided to remake another beloved animated classic from your childhood with all the heart and innovation sucked out and replaced with corporate greed. I learned that if something I’m obsessed with was made with love and respect for the arts, it can help the artform’s consumers in a multitude of ways. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs may not have had a particularly deep story nor had the most complex of characters, but what it did for the animation industry with the new techniques Walt Disney pioneered was enough to inspire millions of people, myself included, to be better versions of ourselves. For me, Disney helped me to become a better artist, which led me to a career path I’m genuinely happy with, and it helped motivate me to learn how to plan a vacation, which motivated me to help my family in vacation planning. No lazy slop like Snow White 2025 can do that, but only something that respects the audience, the creators, and the entire spectrum of art.

Trevor Pacelli is a young adult on the autism spectrum as well as the author of What Movies Can Teach Us About Disabilities, What Movies Can Teach Us About Bullying, Summer of the Fruit Virus and the illustrator of The Kindergarten Adventures of Amazing Grace: What in the World is Autism?, and the author/illustrator of Amazing Grace Goes to the Zoo.

By Trevor Pacelli
AMC movie theaters have been trying to keep themselves relevant by constantly playing an ad of Nicole Kidman monologuing about how magical the movie theatrical experience is: “That indescribable feeling we get when the lights begin to dim… and we go somewhere we have never been before. Not just entertained but somehow reborn together. Dazzling images on a huge silver screen. Sound that I can feel. Somehow, heartbreak feels good in a place like this.” No offense to Nicole Kidman fans, but I always cringe whenever I see this super melodramatic ad that sums up everything wrong with how movies are currently advertised.

Finding a movie that’s both well-made and has an excellent marketing team is rarer than a functional ice cream machine at McDonald’s, and the problem’s getting worse. So based on my observations, I found ten easy rules to make sure any movie falls into the one percent of being both well-made and reaching the highest possible number of customers. These rules don’t just apply to movies, you can apply these to your line of work, whether it’s education, finances, medicine, or virtually anything:

1. Build Up the Hype First

In the months before Barbie came out, Mattel collaborated with hundreds of brands, spreading the film’s distinct pink flair all over. Wicked did the same thing, except with green and pink, which helped make both movies monstrously successful. Other clever advertisement strategies were Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool videos that promoted the Deadpool movies, while fake police reports promoted The Blair Witch Project. In contrast, some of the recent Disney/Pixar movies failed mostly due to an insignificant public presence before their release: Lightyear, Strange World, Elemental, and most recently, Elio. The best movies require just as much investment in their marketing as their production!

2. Set a Deadline with Set Dates

Plenty of movies that pushed back their release dates, sometimes more than once, as The New Mutants did, for reshoots and more editing, ended up flopping with scathing reviews. Yet sometimes a delay can pay off, as in Sonic the Hedgehog. After the first trailer for the first movie triggered such a negative reaction over the Sonic design, the studio delayed the movie for two months so the VFX artists could change Sonic. It ultimately paid off. A situation like this, or, well, a global pandemic, should be among the only exceptions for a competent studio to delay the release date of their approaching movie.

3. Follow the Experts

This point is self-explanatory: just look toward the professionals in the field you’re passionate about, maybe your college professors, your boss, social media influencers, any public figure you admire, or even movies that inspire you. The great Hollywood names took inspiration from previous films. George Lucas based Star Wars on the space operas he grew up watching, while also borrowing from Hollywood westerns and other iconic movies he admired. Also, Quentin Tarantino famously spent hours watching old movies that inspired many of his cinematic tricks. All the legends got to where they ended up because they followed in the footsteps of other successful names.

4. Know Your Medium So Well That Improvisation Doesn’t Scare You

Yes, complications on set always happen, just like life. Among the most famous behind-the-scenes-disaster stories include Viggo Mortensen breaking his toe while kicking a helmet in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, or the mechanical shark from Jaws that hardly ever worked. Steven Spielberg got around the shark problems by simply implying the shark’s presence throughout the first three-quarters of the movie, which ultimately worked because the sense of the unknown made the shark much scarier. Other movies with disastrous productions also became classics, like The African Queen and Apocalypse Now, since their directors knew that plan-A is seldom the only option for meeting their ultimate vision.

5. Know What You’re Doing

This point reminds me of high school drama club. The plays we put on were so pathetic, even compared to those by other high schools, since hardly any of us knew jack about the theatrical arts. Most of us were only in the club to hang out with our friends. Over in Hollywood, producers may greenlight a movie to catch onto a lost trend (like John Carter) or to give a sequel to a movie that audiences have already stopped caring about (like Alice Through the Looking Glass). Rather, a familiarity not just with your medium but also with your audience will reap the ultimate rewards.

6. Recognize What Inspires You

Someone may want to recapture childhood nostalgia or may feel motivated by a traumatic event to ensure nobody else goes through the same pain, but either way, every artist gets their purpose from somewhere. So many movies exist that lack any heart or are motivated to exist solely because of money, even a movie that claims to be about an important social issue, like Black Panther, may only be using those topics as bait to lure in audiences. On the other hand, a movie like Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse exists because the directors and writers had something valuable to say about the webslinger’s legacy and weren’t afraid to delve deep.

7. Coworkers Should Share Your Vision

We all know how chaotic it gets when members of a school group project have different visions. The group’s collaboration often involves more fighting than working, with the presentation in the end being an incoherent mess. Right now, I’m working with a children’s book author as her illustrator, which helped me see first-hand the importance of sharing a collective vision. This author and I do come across different expectations for her book, but we communicate our concerns while bouncing ideas off each other, ultimately meeting a satisfactory compromise. It helps to know the three Cs of Coworking: Communication, Collaboration, Compromise.

8. Avoid Appealing to Modern Trends

Throughout the 2000s, Hollywood made kids’ fantasy novel adaptations left and right to capitalize on the popularity of both the Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings series. Now, those movies are mostly forgotten (anyone remember the Narnia movies or The Golden Compass?) Then in the 2010s, Marvel began a cinematic universe, which led to DC attempting the same thing. Nowadays the whole concept of the cinematic universe is pretty much left behind, to the extent even Marvel is struggling to remain relevant. Whereas the movies that became timeless never initially tried to join a movie trend, they were made because the director/writers decided to just be themselves.

9. Work For the Audience, Not the Elites

One of the many toxic Hollywood trends is Oscar bait. In 2024, the Oscar bait movies included The Apprentice, The Brutalist, A Complete Unknown, Conclave, Maria, Nosferatu, The Six Triple Eight, and the biggest offender of them all: Emilia Pérez. Such movies often adapt a true story that takes place after the 1930s (preferably during WWII), discuss a dumbed down version of a socially important subject matter, and maybe even give the lead a disability. Not only are these movies easy to forget, but they also misrepresent real people and real problems. Instead of trying to follow a checklist for wealthy out-of-touch people, remember that your movie exists for the public.

10. Have Fun

Now, it’s possible to have fun making a movie with a professionally handled marketing team only for it to turn out bad. The Super Mario Bros. Movie and A Minecraft Movie were both made by clear fans of the respective video games, but actively didn’t care about telling a good story. However, it’s also possible to make a good quality movie without any fun. Due to Schindler’s List’s delicate subject matter, there were intentionally no smiles on set, which helped capture the gravity of the Holocaust. Everyone behind Barbie displayed lots of love for the history of Barbie dolls while saying something important about the brand’s legacy. It’s essential to know what’s needed for the production you’re working on or the service you’re providing, and to do it all with a positive attitude and expresses passion for the material. Passion truly is the key to ensuring the other 9 points listed here create a movie, product, or service that will start meaningful conversations.

​By Trevor Pacelli
​Happiness is what we all want, right? Any good parent wants their kid to be joyful in whatever their circumstance, which is a wonderful mentality my parents sustained as they raised me to be a responsible adult. However, parents of past generations often communicated that their children’s emotions were invalid whenever they felt anything besides happy, sometimes being told to, “Stop crying!” We are learning now that children can’t stop crying on cue just because someone tells them to stop. I have noticed a cultural shift in how my generation of parents (millennials) is teaching their kids to process their emotions. Whenever my three-and-a-half-year-old niece cries, even about something as silly as getting startled by a loud noise, her parents just let her cry until she feels better, while comforting her with hugs. Their living room likewise reflects their parenting style with a sign on a wall that says, “All feelings are OK.”

Pixar’s now ten-year-old masterpiece, Inside Out, embraces this very philosophy while going much deeper, teaching kids and parents about psychologically complex topics. It also has helped me, as an adult with autism, process and identify my emotions better.

The movie’s first scene sets the tone with Riley as a newborn baby in soft light, bundled up inside a yellow blanket. The music sounds nostalgic yet simple, like the music of new life coming into existence, and inside Riley’s head is her first emotion- the radiantly yellow Joy. Everything around Joy is at first pitch-black, until Riley’s first memory appears and the cogs form the new headquarters, looking warm and wondrous.

Then Sadness appears with the sounds of a tuba to kill the mood of the soundtrack, and from there, Fear, Disgust, and Anger come in, meaning Riley can’t be consistently happy like Joy prefers. While she comes to see how Fear, Disgust, and Anger all help bring Riley to happiness, Joy has no idea yet how Sadness helps in that end goal.

The five emotions tell Riley how to react to things throughout the day, and those in turn create her memories that are encapsulated in marble-like balls. Each one has its own color—the happy memories are yellow, the angry memories are red, the disgusting memories are green, the fearful memories are purple, and the sad memories are blue. Most of Riley’s memories are yellow, and very few are blue, reflecting how much Riley, like most people, wants to be happy all the time. Although there’s still plenty of darkness lurking in every whimsical corner that Joy and Sadness come across while stuck with Riley’s core memories. They navigate the land together, trying to get back to headquarters.

Moving from Minnesota to San Francisco put Riley into a serious mental breakdown and she temporarily loses her happiness and sadness, which sends her islands of personality crashing into the memory dump. The destruction of the colorful scenery around the world of Riley’s brain provides audiences of all ages with a helpful illustration of what a gradual descent into depression looks like. The train of thought is destroyed and sent to the memory dump. Renovations are made throughout Imagination Land, which means Riley’s old imaginary friend Bing Bong will have to soon end up forgotten forever. The Dream Productions studio has written disturbing dreams to reflect Riley’s experience, which get worse as Sadness gets the idea to scare her awake. Riley’s deepest fears are kept locked up, and one of them, Jangles the clown, is let loose to wake her up from her dreams.

The manic activity inside Riley’s head comes out in her actions when she gets the idea to run away, which shuts down the control panel, rendering Fear, Disgust, and Anger incapable of making Riley do or feel anything. Only Sadness can restore control back to the panel and get Riley to fix her mistake by returning home. Not only do these components maintain the plot’s escalating tension, but they’re also very real signs of what happens when someone grows depressed due to trauma or a massive change.

It leads me to the best way I found this movie can help anyone better analyze their emotions, which in turn can help them know what to do about their emotions. A couple of months ago I went on a church retreat, and one of our seminars included a lesson about understanding our emotions, which our senior pastor tied directly to Inside Out. The lesson included questions we can ask ourselves regarding our emotional reactions:

• Joy- What gift was I given?
• Sadness- What loss am I grieving?
• Fear- How was my safety endangered?
• Disgust- What desire of mine was unfulfilled?
• Anger- How was I wronged?

These questions, along with the movie, helped me as someone with autism better analyze my own emotions. For instance, if I ever walked out of a movie feeling upset by its poor quality, the above questions can lead me to conclude that I didn’t feel angry, since I wasn’t personally wronged by the movie. Disgust is a more accurate emotion to associate the memory with, because I had a desire for a better movie left empty. Thus, I can conclude that the correct mode of action isn’t to seek justice, but rather to not stress over the bad movie and move on.

However, getting to a satisfactory place like that isn’t easy for every memory that must be analyzed, as trying to understand your emotions from something as traumatic as a car accident or the death of a loved one requires a much longer recovery process. Inside Out likewise knows how long it takes, as the new core memory Riley forms at the end to represent her new life in San Francisco isn’t all yellow- it's yellow and blue. Living in San Francisco isn’t suddenly happy for Riley; it’s bittersweet, because she’ll always miss Minnesota. Her core memories from here also aren’t all yellow, they’re mixes of all five emotion colors, which reflects her coming of age. Riley didn’t reach that point of starting recovery by herself, she first needed to open her pain up to her parents, which is one of the best methods to eliminate past hurt. Once the memory is out of the dark, whether in a journal, a diary, or to a loved one, it’ll start to slowly burn. You too can bring yourself to a better place by listening and responding to your emotions, because whether you feel joy, anger, disgust, fear, or sadness, it’s always valid.

Trevor Pacelli is a young adult on the autism spectrum as well as the author of What Movies Can Teach Us About Disabilities, What Movies Can Teach Us About Bullying, Summer of the Fruit Virus and the illustrator of The Kindergarten Adventures of Amazing Grace: What in the World is Autism?, and the author/illustrator of Amazing Grace Goes to the Zoo.