Aaron Becker
Bringing a Journey Full Circle
In Journey, Aaron Becker’s wordless debut
picture book, a lonely girl embarks on a voyage
of adventure and danger after going through
a magic door she draws on her bedroom wall.
The author followed up that 2014 Caldecott
Honor Book with Quest, and now brings the
girl’s enchanted excursion to a close in Return
(Candlewick, Aug.), which he is eager to introduce to booksellers at BEA. Becker, who has
worked as an artist on animated children’s
films for several studios, including Lucasfilms,
Disney, and Pixar, had long aspired to write a
children’s book. “That had been my goal since
I was in my 20s, in the late 1990s,” he recalls.
“I was so excited about having Journey pub-
lished that I didn’t think about doing another
book for quite some time. I thought maybe I was done.” But Becker had a
change of heart after receiving Caldecott Honor recognition: “It was icing
on the cake, and it made me excited to tell more stories. I put a lot of pres-
sure on myself to create Journey, and this award was like someone saying,
‘What you’re doing is worthwhile.’ It legitimized something that is very
private, and made it easier to move on to Quest.”
Becker explains that he didn’t initially conceive of his inaugural book as
wordless. “I started with a vision of a girl in a boat entering a walled island
castle, and from there etched out a story in thumbnail form,” he says. “When
I went to add words, I realized that there was no need for them, which sur-
prised me. Though it wasn’t premeditated, this was obviously a format that
comes naturally to me, perhaps because of my film background. The idea of
storyboards and storytelling through frames seemed very normal.”
The author’s own real-life journeys—he has lived in rural Japan and East
Africa, and has backpacked through South Pacific islands and Sweden—
have fueled his creative vision. As a boy of 10, he visited the walled island of
Mont Saint-Michel in Normandy, which many years later inspired the
imposing castle that appears throughout the Journey trilogy. “Though Mont
Saint-Michel gave me a visual starting point,” he says, “I expanded the
castle, and the rest of the books’ world, outward to include other things that
inspire me—like buildings in Florence and other parts of northern Europe,
and the architecture of Asia and the Middle East.”
More recently, the author, who lives in Massachusetts, and his family jour-
neyed to Spain while he finished his watercolors for Return, and worked
with filmmakers on a documentary about his creation of that book.
Currently, the author is juggling several potential children’s book projects.
“One is a wordless picture book, some involve writing, and some involve a
lot of writing,” he notes. “One result of the Caldecott Honor is that it gives
me the luxury, as a book creator, to play with different ideas, without feeling
pressure. That’s a good spot to be in, and I’m taking full advantage of it.”
Fans of his fantasy trilogy can meet Becker today, 1:30–2:30 p.m., when he
autographs lithos from Return at a ticketed signing at Table 6. —Sally Lodge
Ann M. Martin
Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle’s Niece
Follows in Her Footsteps
Introduced in 1947’s Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, Betty
MacDonald’s eponymous heroine won the
hearts of children and their parents, who
were—and continue to be—enchanted by her
magical cures for such timeless vexations as
kids’ impudence, interrupting, bickering, and
refusal to share. Since that title and its four
sequels were inspired by MacDonald’s experiences raising her children and grandchildren,
it’s heartwarming that her great-granddaughter, Annie Parnell, has teamed up with Ann M.
Martin to expand Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle’s legacy in Missy Piggle-Wiggle and the
Whatever Cure (Feiwel & Friends, Sept.).
In this recasting of the legendary series, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle has gone
away unexpectedly and left her niece, Missy Piggle-Wiggle—who also pos-sesses magical powers—in charge of the Upside-Down House and the
menagerie of animals living there. Ben Hatke is the illustrator for Missy
Piggle-Wiggle and the Whatever Cure and a sequel, due in fall 2017. He follows Maurice Sendak and Hilary Knight as illustrator of novels set in this
enchanted world.
Jean Feiwel and Liz Szabla of Feiwel & Friends approached Martin (whose
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BOOTH 2447
SIGNINGS
GIVEAWAYS
Every day
ALL DAY
Art cards, posters, buttons, notepads,
recipe cards, and ARCs!
Thursday, May 12, 2016
3:00 – 3:30 PM
Teagan White
Adventures with
Barefoot Critters
Get a Counting
with Barefoot
Critters art card!
Changing the world, one book at a time.
penguinrandomhouse.com
AUTOGRAPHING AREA (TABLE 5)
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