Welsh children’s author Huw Aaron on prioritising story over a message

“Basically, there is a monkey that is actually a pig and everyone is stupid.” Huw Aaron, the cartoonist and picture book author is describing the plot of his upcoming picture book, Monkeypig, which is about a pig who is living as a monkey, and what happens when one of the actual monkeys decides there is an imposter in the group. “The monkeys are happily living in the jungle but they are all a bit thick and haven’t noticed that there is a monkey that isn’t a monkey. The story is about them trying to find the imposter and seeing if Molly will stay undetected, or will she be accepted?”

Fans of Aaron’s will recognise his trademark silliness, humour and visual comedy throughout the book, as Molly the Monkeypig tries to prove she is a real monkey by charging through a pile of bananas and swinging through the trees. Her attempts at monkey behaviour are endearingly poor; she goes “Slip! Twang! Bash! Crash” through the trees, but the monkeys do not seem to notice. They decree that monkeys as a species are silly, play and have fun, and although there is an imposter in their midst it is (spoiler alert) not Molly.

The reader might take a message of friendship and acceptance from the story, but Aaron does not like to define what that might be. “I never start with a message or a theme or a moral,” says the Welsh artist.

“For me, the story is the story. Afterwards I think you can perhaps say ‘that’s what the story is about’, but I’m wary of stories that start with ‘this is something that I want to say’. You have to be true to the story first.”

The Books Council of Wales and Literature Wales, along with publishers, saw my enthusiasm to make children’s books in different stripes and I was given free rein to experiment

There are “maybe” some subliminal ideas about belonging because Aaron was creating the book during a time of turmoil around Trump and Brexit, but hopefully these are done with a light touch, he says. 

This is the third of Aaron’s books to be published by Puffin (last year the publisher announced it had offered him a “significant” six-figure advance, following a “hotly contested” eight-way auction) but Monkeypig has been in existence in some form since 2016 or 2017, and it is the book that Aaron credits with getting him interest from London-based publishers.

“Monkeys are funny and pigs are funny. Combine them and you are on to a winner,” he says. “It’s lovely to finally see it in print.”

Aaron grew up loving to read, and would doodle and draw “constantly”, but a career as an illustrator came after a brief foray into finance. In his mid-20s he met his wife, Luned, who is a writer, and through her he met actors and musicians, and realised that people can make a living doing creative things. He started sending some of his doodles to magazines such as Private Eye and the Spectator, and a few were accepted.

The buzz he got from being published was incredible, and something he still feels now. “The feeling of having an idea in my mind, putting it on paper and sharing it, and then other people enjoy it, is still a driving force.”

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