Alexis Deacon

Alexis Deacon was one of the ten Best New Illustrators selected by Booktrust's Big Picture campaign in 2008. He has always loved to draw and has been keeping sketchbooks since he was a small child, when he would often move from playing games with toys into drawing stories about them.

Alexis started work on his first picture book, Slow Loris, while studying illustration at the University of Brighton. He spent many hours in a zoo sketching a slow loris (an animal similar to a sloth) and then created the story of the creature's secret life after the visitors had gone home. Alexis' second book, Beegu, about a lonely baby alien trying to find its mother on Earth, was created when he moved to London after art college. Beegu was shortlisted for the Kate Greenaway Medal.

Alexis wrote and illustrated a fantastic new version of The Selfish Giant, and more recently he has illustrated Russell Hoban’s story called Jim’s Lion, published in 2015 and I am Henry Finch illustrated by Viviane Schwarz. His latest picture book, Ergo is also illustrated by Viviane Schwarz and will be published by Candlewick Press in August 2021.

The New York Times Best Illustrated Children's Books Award
Observer/Jonathan Cape/Comica Graphic Short Story Prize

Alexis Deacon may well be Burningham's heir apparent . . . Deacon's poignant and understated text is brilliantly served by his illustrations, which carry distant reminders of some of the best illustrators of the last 100 years and yet still remain uniquely his own.

Dinah Hall, The Sunday Telegraph

Did you know…

Alexis loves stories! The stranger and more fantastic the better!
He especially loved comic books when he was growing up. Tintin, Asterix, The Beano, The Dandy, Dick Tracy, Judge Dredd and Rogue Trooper from 2000AD… he would get totally lost in all of them.
The name Beegu came from a pet dog.