Description
About the book:
Aadya looks just like her mother (Aai)—same little nose, same delicate ears, same big eyes and identical thick, long hair. But one day, Aai goes away to a big hospital with a promise to return before Aadya learns her next Math lesson. The long-awaited return shocks Aadya because now her mother looks completely unlike her. She wonders if Aai will ever greet her with her usual, cheery, ‘Hello! Mini-me.’
Or will Aadya have to take matters into her own hands just to hear that again?
With lyrical prose and a tender touch, Aai and I is an empowering story of the bond between a mother and a daughter, and of the little one finding her own identity as she finds herself no longer ‘looking’ the same as her mother. Mamta Nainy captures with elan Aadya’s innocence, impatience and dilemma, and Sanket Pethkar’s vibrant, gorgeous artwork brings to life the nuanced see-saw of the child’s emotions in this Maharashtrian household.
The various themes and sub-themes that the title touches upon:
Self-identity, self-love, body image, hair-love, the ideas of beauty, appearance, separation anxiety, facing fears, mother and daughters, diseases and illnesses, cancer survivor, multigenerational bonds, empathy.
About the Creators:
Mamta Nainy is a writer and editor based in New Delhi. She has authored over thirty books for children, including A Brush with Indian Art that won The Hindu Young World-Goodbooks Award 2019 and Mutthasi’s Missing Teeth that won the Peek-a-Book Children’s Choice Award 2019. She also works as a literary translator, translating primarily from English to Hindi, with several published works of translations.
Mamta thinks that the only good part about being an adult is that she can choose to have an ice-cream for breakfast and a cake for lunch. She loves travelling but is too lazy to do it, so she mostly makes do with reading.
Sanket Pethkar is a Mumbai-based freelance illustrator and designer for various publications in India. He graduated with a degree in fine arts and pursued his Master’s in Print Making and has worked as a resident artist at IDC IIT, Bombay.
He loves developing picture books. Painting, sculpting, printmaking, theatre and children workshops have been my tools to navigate through the exciting journey of making picture books.
