We're Looking for an Illustrator. But That's Not Really What This Is About.
Know a Filipino illustrator whose hand belongs on a book like this? Send them this.
A few weeks ago I finished a children’s book and just revised another.
It’s called Basketball & Pizza. It’s about my son Ravi, who is three and a half, and his obsession with the Harlem Globetrotters and Costco pizza nights. It’s live on Amazon. I’m proud of it. You can read it here for free.
I was a doctoral student in English Education, a twenty-year high school English teacher, and someone who came to fatherhood late and unexpectedly. Ravi arrived in the hardest year of my life. So did this imprint.
We are Little Hollow Books — Penhollow | Studiolabs. We make picture books about real moments.
We also just re-released Bambantay Tuturod: The Mountains Stand With Us — our Ilocano heritage title set in the mountains of Northern Luzon. The visuals in that book are the most deeply Filipino work we’ve produced. Together, Basketball & Pizza and Bambantay Tuturod give you the clearest picture of where we’ve been — and where we’re going.
Our next book is different.
Ibinglay tayo ti lawag — The Light We Share is a 48-page picture book about a boy named Lino, a parol he builds for his cousin traveling from America, and the storm that carries it away before she arrives. It moves through Simbang Gabi, through community, through eight mornings of the same quiet prayer. It’s about diaspora. About the light that holds families together across oceans.
It was co-authored by my wife Kathleen, a native Ilocano speaker from San Nicolas, Ilocos Norte, Philippines. Her parents arrived from Hawaii last week. This book knows what it’s about because the family it comes from knows what it’s about.
We’re targeting a mid-September release, ahead of Filipino American Heritage Month in October.
And we need an illustrator.
Here’s what I want to say honestly, because I think it matters:
I’m not looking for a contractor. I’m looking for a collaborator — someone who wants to build something with us across multiple books and multiple years. We have a Little Spark series in development. We have heritage titles in progress. We have stories that are going to keep coming because we have a family that keeps living them.
If you’re a Filipino illustrator — or an illustrator who can go deep into a culture that isn’t yours with genuine care and precision — I want to hear from you.
And if you know someone whose hand belongs on this book, please send them this.
The light always knows the way home. We’re just looking for someone to help us draw it.
— Avi Penhollow Little Hollow Books | Penhollow Studiolabs