I met Aaron Becker at LA14SCBWI,
and let me tell you,
his presentation was GREAT!
The first half was spent getting us all used to our parts
to sing “Don’t Stop Believin”
and the rest was equally epic.
I was also lucky enough to get to see him in a breakout session where he talked about Journey, the process, how the story changed, everything.
And I got to hear him speak AGAIN for Quest a little bit ago.
Anywho, on to the book!
Title: Journey
Published by: Candlewick Press, 2013
Written by: Aaron Becker
Illustrated by: Aaron Becker
Word Count: zero (wordless)
Pages: 40
In one word: Breathtaking
In one sentence: A girl with a magical crayon takes a journey to a beautiful new world.
Favorite pages:
Likes:
All the little Easter Eggs and hints of what’s to come hidden in the illustrations.
The pages where you see her draw part of something, and you get to guess before the page turn what she’s going to make!
The use of color and how that reflects how the girl is feeling. Same thing with the vastness of certain spreads and the balance of pages with small spots.
On a related note, it’s cool to pull back and see the whole situation, then zoom in and have one little things magnified. This really guides us along the story and allows us to breathe in it.
I LOVE the end.
Learns:
Contrast is so effective.
Epic quests make for good books!
Always look for extra fun art things in wordless books!
What did you read today?
Tomorrow is the second book in the Journey trilogy,
and a post about meeting Aaron Becker! Stay tuned 🙂
KE
I loved “Journey” and have a copy of “Quest”, which I have been saving for when I run out of library books (which may be soon if I manage to renew a book tomorrow that is due).
I’ve actually been trying to read the books that are due at the library in case there are holds. A few are on the long list for the National Book Award, so it is not out of the question. I should finish “Skink No Surrender” tonight. It is such a weird title, but a page turner of a book. I am thinking I am going to have to reserve “Hoot” and the rest of his books soon.