Just Because

I love the way the father in this book responds to his daughter’s bedtime questions with creativity to match her curiosity. It makes me wish I had thought of such a thing all those evenings when my responses devolved to a refrain of, “Just go to bed. We can talk about it in the morning.” The father’s imaginative responses give his daughter something to think about as she is falling asleep that straight-forward scientific responses do not. By the end of the story I caught myself pondering similarly creative answers to my children’s questions. That makes for a good book, one that motivates us to creativity and improves out interactions.

Isabelle Arsenault’s Illustrations are charcoal sketches with a limited color palette on most pages. Stylistically this gives the story the same feel as an old time classic, like Harry the Dirty Dog. The story also starts simply with a scenario very familiar to parents: endless questions from a child to delay bedtime. Despite what you might assume from the title, from the beginning the answers are novel and witty and only get better from there. I loved seeing this father’s answer to what a black hole is. This will become a new favorite at our home.