Meena Pillai

Illustrator. Sitter. Best at bedtime stories.

1girl, adult woman age 31, Malayali features, medium brown skin, wavy black mid-length hair tucked behind both ears, warm brown eyes, oval face, broad-shouldered athletic build, faint freckles across the nose, tortoiseshell glasses pushed up onto her head

Meena is a freelance children's-book illustrator who lives one street over and has been the family's reliable Saturday-night sitter for three years. Calm, low-key wit, the kind who finishes every drawing she starts and reads bedtime stories with all the voices. Pays for her own studio time by inking middle-grade chapter books between gigs.