How I Became a Picture Book Author-Illustrator

Hello, dear readers! 

My name is Haruka Aoki, and I am a poet-illustrator based in Lisbon, Portugal. My debut picture book Fitting In was published in 2022, and I am currently editing the manuscript for my second picture book. Outside of picture book land, I regularly write and draw comics for The New York Times and The Washington Post and illustrate for clients including The Lycée Français de New York and The New York City Department of Sanitation. 

Lovely to meet you! 

Signing the first batch of my debut picture book, Fitting In

My wonderful colleague Lee Wind has kindly given me the keys to the SCBWI blog, so for the rest of August you will be hearing from me! And what perfect timing. I just returned from a 2.5-month-long work trip to the U.S., which included a bunch of story time readings in New York City, a printmaking fellowship in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and a retreat for picture book author-illustrators in the Catskills in upstate New York. 

We will be chatting about all of that here! 

The Beginning of My Picture Book Journey

But first, I’d love to kick off this series by addressing a question I get quite a bit:

“How did you become a children’s book author-illustrator?” 

When we attend a story time at a library or a book signing at a bookstore, doesn’t it look like the authors and illustrators have been working as authors and illustrators their entire lives? Plus, they get to do this full-time? Maybe they even have their own cozy cottage where they write and illustrate their books? Well, for some of us, that is true. And for others, we juggle our picture book lives with other jobs, grants, and residencies that support us. 

But what all of us do, whether we work as a barista, a big time lawyer, or a famous illustrator, is to make time for our picture books. And we often do this because we have a story to tell, or a something real and deep inside that we want to express.

Fitting In book launch at Yu & Me Books in Chinatown, New York City

The idea for my first picture book came to me in 2015 when I was working as a graphic designer at a cancer center. As an immigrant who grew up in four countries and eleven cities, I often felt different from the communities I was entering and felt the pressure to conform. I wanted to express this feeling of otherness while sharing the beauty of self-acceptance and self-love. Isn’t it our differences that make us special and unique? 

The desire to share my story led to Fitting In, a picture book about a little red square born into a world of blue circles. With the encouragement of their parents, Square tries to fit in by wearing extra shapes, but as we may have experienced in our own lives, pretending to be something you are not is very hard work! It can even hurt us.

Writing, Illustrating, and a Full-Time Job 

From the very beginning, I knew that I wanted to work on my first picture book with a colleague—someone who not only understood what it felt like to be different, but also someone I respected and trusted. While studying communications design at Pratt Institute, I met John Olson, who stood out as one of the most talented graphic designers in my cohort and inspired many with his LGBTQIA+ activism. I was nervous to approach someone so shiny, but I worked up the courage and pitched my idea to him. Luckily for me, he accepted my request, et voilà! That was the beginning of our partnership. 

We both knew that we wanted to write and illustrate, that the book would be a full collaboration between us. This especially felt natural for me and still does, as I loved both writing and visual art since I was a child.  

Both John and I had full-time jobs, so we created bubbles of time in the evenings and weekends to narrow down our story, write the manuscript, sketch out characters, and make a book dummy. With all of my coworkers sticking religiously to the “5” part of the “9 to 5” schedule (you could hear backpacks being zipped around 4:58pm), I had plenty of time to think about and work on the book. John and I also created a fun routine of having our picture book meetings at diners across the city, and this turned into a beloved tradition. 

One of our many picture book meetings held at diners across New York City!

“We’d love to publish your book!”

After sending our book to a big list of publishers and agents that we found on the internet, receiving many a rejection, excitedly signing with a literary agent but getting no publishers to bite, we decided to leave our book on the shelf, quite literally, and take the time to rest. 

A few years later, it was not an agent or a cold call that connected us to a publisher, but a friend from elementary school who had become a culinary artist, writer, and cookbook author. Two weeks after I had left my big corporate art director job, we received the news we dreamt about for so long: “We’d love to publish your book!” 

And there, dear readers, is a short story of how I became a picture book author-illustrator. 

Since a fantastic picture book idea will not write or draw itself to become a book, we must put in the work to draw the characters, build their worlds, and give them a voice. We must also be the ones to support them by querying agents or editors, making marketing materials, speaking with librarians, and traveling on book tours. 

It’s a lot of work, but it’s also a lot of love. 

P.S.: Have any burning questions or interesting stories of your journey as a picture book author/illustrator? If so, you can leave a comment or question on this post. I’d love to hear your stories too! 

May we create and inspire from the heart, 

Haruka Aoki

About the Author

Haruka Aoki (she/they) is a queer Japanese artist and poet-illustrator who is local to Lisbon, Portugal, New York City, and Kamakura, Japan. Their debut picture book Fitting In, which they co-wrote and illustrated with John Olson, was published by Sky Pony Press in 2022. 

Their narrative artwork, often featured in The New York Times and The Washington Post, aims to inspire individuals with both wit and sincerity as their hand-drawn characters engage the world around them. Growing up often unsure of where “home” would be next, Haruka found and continues to find comfort in nature and community, a constant starting point in their work. 

Haruka received her BA from Brown University and her MS from Pratt Institute. They are a Fine Arts Work Center Scholar and a recipient of the SCBWI BIPOC Scholarship. She often feels deeply grateful to be an earthling. 

Website: harukaaoki.com 

Instagram: @thecosmicharuka