Just Because
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Why is the ocean blue? What is the rain? What happened to the dinosaurs? It might be time for bed, but one child is too full of questions about the world to go to sleep just yet. Little ones and their parents will be charmed and delighted as a patient father offers up increasingly creative responses to his childโs nighttime wonderings. Any child who has ever asked โWhy?โ โ and any parent who has attempted an explanation โ will recognize themselves in this sweet storybook for dreamers who are looking for answers beyond โJust because.โ
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Mac Barnett, the 2025โ2026 National Ambassador for Young Peopleโs Literature, is a New York Times best-selling author of stories for children. His work has been translated into more than thirty languages and sold more than five million copies worldwide. Mac Barnettโs books have won many prizes, including two Caldecott Honors, three New York Times/ New York Public Library Best Illustrated Childrenโs Book Awards, three E. B. White Read-Aloud Awards, the Boston GlobeโHorn Book Award, Germanyโs Jugendliteraturpreis, Chinaโs Chen Bochui International Childrenโs Literature Award, the Netherlandsโ Zilveren Griffel, and Italyโs Premio Orbil. He is the cocreator, with Jon Klassen, of the Substack Looking at Picture Books, as well as Shape Island, a stop-motion animated series on Apple TV+, based on their best-selling Shapes series of picture books. Mac Barnett lives in Oakland, California.
Isabelle Arsenault is the creator of Alpha and the illustrator of several other picture books, including Jane, the Fox, and Me by Fanny Britt, a New York Times Book Review Best Illustrated Childrenโs Book of the Year; Captain Rosalie by Timothรฉe de Fombelle; and Cloth Lullaby: The Woven Life of Louise Bourgeois by Amy Novesky. Isabelle Arsenault lives in Montreal.
