Meet the Creator: Circle Yuen

1. What inspired you to create Mama’s Wedding?

There was a time when I didn't have the words for this story. It lived in quieter places: a home changing shape, a child sitting on a wedding dress’ train, a mother putting on that dress for the second time.

Six years ago in Hong Kong, I sat with my sketchbook in the months before my own wedding. My first note to myself was simple: how a mama overcomes her fear of remarriage. The early drawings were heavy with adult uncertainty, and my daughters appeared in them mostly as quiet companions to my own journey.

Then one day, my daughter looked at my sketches and asked:

"Can this story be about the future, rather than what happened before?"

That question changed the direction of everything. She was asking me to see the story from where a child was standing. It stayed with me until I began my MA in Children's Book Illustration at the Cambridge School of Art, where I started to understand that my own memories could be the starting point, but they could not be the destination of the story.

The narrative gradually moved away from my own fears and towards the children living through the change. My daughters were asking a different question from the one I had been drawing. That shift became the emotional heart of Mama’s Wedding.

2. In Mama’s Wedding, do you have a favourite scene or line? What makes it particularly meaningful to you?

My favourite moment is when Ruby takes her Mama's hand and walks her towards Cindy and Alex.

It is a small gesture, but it carries the whole book for me. Ruby is not standing at the edge of her mother's new life, watching it happen. Early in the story she is full of quiet questions. Here she sees her mother's happiness, and chooses to give it room.

I did not want to tell a child that everything will be fine, or offer an easy explanation for something that may feel complicated. I wanted to leave room for their own questions, and for their own ways of taking part.

Ruby's gesture is small, but it is hers.

3. Pick one of your favourite spreads from Mama’s Wedding and walk us through how it came together. What did your early sketches look like? How did you shape the storytelling on the page, and what changed along the way?

I chose the spread where the girls peek into Mama's room and find her in her dress, and Mama gathers them both into a hug.

It didn’t start there. My early drafts were written in the first person, with Cindy telling the story and repeating what Mama had said to her: that there were stories inside her tears, some old and some new. The images followed that voice, drawn in the language of memory rather than of a room. Rain on one side, kites on the other.

Moving the text into the third person changed what the pictures needed to do. The moment now happens in front of the reader rather than being recounted to them, and the composition had to hold that.

The hardest part was Mama's face, which had to carry joy, grief and tenderness all at once. I drew her many times before I found a version that could hold all three without tipping into any one of them.

4. How does creating both the words and pictures shape the way you tell a story?

What do you find most challenging and most enjoyable about the process?

Creating a picturebook from lived experience feels like free-diving into the memory of the sea. When I illustrate another author's text, it feels more like hiking: the text provides a clear map for the journey, and through drawing, you discover unexpected scenery along the path. But when the story is one I have lived, and the words and images are both mine, there is no map. I dive deep, searching through feelings and visual images until text and illustration begin to speak with one voice.

Sometimes an image arrives before the words. Sometimes a sentence changes the entire composition. 

The team at Lantana helped me discover another part of that process. They suggested giving the girls small tasks to carry out at the wedding, which gave the children a clearer presence in the story. That structure reached me the way light reaches down from the surface. Even when the pressure was high, I could always find my way back up to breathe.

5. Where do you usually write and draw? Is there anything essential to your studio or daily routine?

My studio practice is deeply connected to observation and research. I carry my sketchbook everywhere and love drawing on location. I often find that stepping away from my desk helps me look at an idea from a fresh perspective. I work with traditional and mixed media, and I love the subtle traces and imperfections that remain in handmade work.

Swimming is part of my routine, and I have come to see it as part of the work rather than separate from it. Making a book this close to my heart asks for a particular kind of steadiness, and being in water is where I find it. It gathers my attention and helps me find what I need before I can return to the page.

6. What do you hope readers will feel or take away from reading Mama’s Wedding?

I hope Mama's Wedding offers a quiet kind of companionship.

When a family changes shape, children and parents experience many small moments of transition and separation. A parent might miss bedtime, or a holiday may be spent in a different home. Everyday routines that were once familiar no longer look quite the same.

I do not believe love means pretending these changes are easy. What matters is being honest about what we feel, and continuing to show up for one another. Children need more than a logical explanation of change. If there is one thing readers take from this book, I hope it is knowing that when a family changes, love does not disappear. It simply blooms in new ways.

As Sophie Blackall beautifully said: “making a book is like building a home for readers.” I hope this small home stays with them through the nights when missing someone feels as wide as the sea, and that something brave grows there.