
Journeying into the Unknown: an interview with Aaron Becker
Jake Hope interviews Aaron Becker, winner of the 2024 Yoto Carnegie Medal for illustration.
The day after being announced as the winner of the 2024 Yoto Carnegie Medal for illustration, Aaron Becker is staying at a hotel in London. He tells me that he exited the lift on the wrong floor and found a door leading into what he describes as ‘an incredible rooftop garden that I didn’t even know existed.’ It feels strangely approriate and it’s from here that he speaks, a case of life mirroring art it seems. Aaron’s first book, Journey, was an astonishing wordless picturebook that acts as something of a metaphor for reading itself with a young girl discovering a doorway that allows her to journey to lands of imagination and intrigue.
The book was created at a time of change for Aaron. Knowing some html, Aaron had got a job as a web designer before, realising his interest and aptitude for visuals and design, later moving into film. ‘I was a film designer for ten years, but always wanted to be a picturebook maker. Then I found myself out of work at the exact moment my first child was born. I’d always wanted to do a picturebook and this felt like my last shot. Somehow, I believed that it would work.’
Aaron describes how he poured everything into the book. ‘It was a culmination of all of my creative ideas up until that point.’ Aaron is a believer that people working in the arts are vessels for ideas. ‘There’s magic in them that we’re privy too, but we’re not always aware how it works, we have to hope it continues.’
Initially Aaron wasn’t aware Journey would be wordless ‘It wasn’t necessarily a conscious choice, I simply worked the story out in storyboard form which I was used to doing in film and then went in to add words because that’s what I thought books should do. It was the most boring text imaginable and I realised this was because everything I wanted to put in the text was already being done by the pictures.’
Aaron feels very fortunate in how it was received – it was a Caldecott Honor book in 2014. ‘I wanted it to have a sense of wonder and of adventure and to provide opportunities to create worlds. It captured the zeitgeist and did well allowing me switch careers meaning not only have I been able to do this full time, but I can take the creative risks I want to take.’ Part of this has been about challenging himself, finding new ideas and new ways to keep himself interested. ‘I’m lucky that the publishers have backed whatever crazy ideas I have, like The Tree and the River.’
The Tree and the River has an unusual origin story: Aaron constructing a scale model of the landscape for the book in clay and wood. ‘It

Aaron Becker, illustrator winner, for The Yoto Carnegie Awards at The Cambridge Theatre, London.
Photographed by Tom Pilston for The Yoto Carnegie Awards ©Tom Pilston
came about because I had an idea that was too big for my brain to handle.’ Aaron sees part of the book’s success being the details within it and the way this encourages readers to slow down so that the whole thing comes to life. ‘I had to build the model in order to see it. I don’t think I could have sketched my way into this. There was an empty field of clay and I put one building on it and that’s how the story starts with one building. I took a photograph and then it was time for the next twenty to thirty years to pass and so I built a few more buildings. My hands literally felt my way around the landscape and I would discover where I wanted to build things.’ Alongside the construction, there were also destructive elements, ‘I would tear things down and push the clay and move the river and grow the tree demolishing entire blocks of the city to build new one, I felt like an architect over time.’
There’s a meditative or philosophical quality to the book, which Aaron says was intentional. ‘I wanted to mirror our existence as individuals with our existence as a whole – as a species – and I wanted to mirror both with the natural world as well. There are parallels between who we are as a specific person and how we cherish life and how nature deals with this and how mankind deals with it. These are big ideas. I didn’t want to say anything too specific and didn’t have a moral imperative.’ This open-ended quality makes the book particularly lithe and personal for readers.
‘The other wordless books that I’ve done have generally been narrative in that there are characters and a plot to guide readers through what you know you want the story to be. There’s no plot in this book which breaks some serious rules. I wondered whether people would think it’s about how terrible people are, or how wonderful we are, or how complicated life can be. It deals with some pretty complex themes and it amazes me the way children respond to these.’ Testament to the positive response by young readers is the fact the book was selected as the Shadowers’ Choice for illustration this year.
Aaron attributes its popularity to some of the detail in the book. Some of this came from an interest in illustrator Mercer Mayer’s work. ‘He packed his books with so much detail and this became a huge influence on me.’ Aaron finds these details and hidden elements particularly fascinating, ‘I don’t know why, there’s something magical and comforting in these hidden places. Children often want to play hide and seek or go out into the woods to find little places beneath the trees. I still get a kick out of it.’
Since The Tree and the River was published, Aaron has a new book, The Last Zookeeper, which also touches on climate change but is a modern reimaging of Noah’s ark. He’s working on a new wordless picture book with his editor about journeying into the unknown, something Aaron himself is looking forward to doing when he starts teaching illustration at Rhode Island School for Design. ‘I can’t believe I was able to get the job, it’s something I really want to do. I feel like I have a lot to give, but also have a lot to receive through interacting with young people who are often idealistic and want to change the status quo.’ Aaron sees this as part of a constant change and evolution in how stories are told and images are created and hopes his work-in-progress will help children to realise they’re not the first people in the world wanting to take risks yet not always feeling sure how to do this.
Jake Hope is a reading development and children’s book consultant, and chair of the YOTO Carnegies Working Party.
Books mentioned:
The Tree and the River, Walker Books, 978-1529516760, £7.99 pbk.
Journey, Walker Books, 978-1406355345, £7.99 pbk.
The Last Zookeeper, Walker Books, 978-1529517873, £12.99 hbk