Home, Home

A debut picture book that is filled with beautiful and lush illustrations, about the duality of home and living between two cultures.

Summer has arrived and Ajesh is ready to spend the next few months in the comfort of his bedroom, drinking the chaiya that his mom makes specially for him. Ajesh feels most at home when he is drinking the warm, milky tea that is like the color of his skin with his parents, and away from the outside world that often makes him feel like he’s different.

But when his parents announce that they’re going on a trip ＂back home＂--to Kerala, India--he has trouble connecting with a place that is so unfamiliar to him. The sticky heat, crowded streets, and swaths of family members who seem to know his name, even though they’ve never met, make him long for the life and physical spaces that he’s used to--that is, until chaiya is served.

Home, Home is a beautiful debut picture book about the duality of home, connecting with your ancestral lands, and the daily rituals that ground and link us across space and generations.

Born and raised in New York, Sibu Puthenveettil is a first-generation child of immigrants. He spent a great deal of his childhood years scribbling and sketching, dreaming and imagining. Today, he tells stories through picture books. Sibu studied English lit at SUNY Stony Brook, and illustration at the Hartford Art School. When he’s not in front of his drawing board, he’s taking pictures while hiking, and running from squirrels.