Mac Barnett, the 2025-2026 National Ambassador for Young People's 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 Barnett's books have won many prizes, including two Caldecott Honors, three New York Times/ New York Public Library Best Illustrated Children's Book Awards, three E. B. White Read-Aloud Awards, the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, Germany's Jugendliteraturpreis, China's Chen Bochui International Children's Literature Award, the Netherlands' Zilveren Griffel, and Italy's 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 Children's Book of the Year; Captain Rosalie by Timothée de Fombelle; and Cloth Lullaby: The Woven Life of Louise Bourgeois by Amy Novesky. Isabelle Arsenault lives in Montreal.

The exacting, exquisite phrasing electrifies readers, and full-bleed illustrations pull them into an extraordinary alternate universe...Matte paper, flat colors, conventional & typesetting, and a mid-20th-century look to the light-skinned people conjure a retro feel, allowing the unexpected, original answers to stand out even more. Charming, playful, and extraordinary imaginings will galvanize young minds to find inspired answers to their own questions.
--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Arsenault's strikingly detailed artwork depicts the bedroom scenes in grays, blacks, and soft whites...A charming celebration of bedtime rituals and parent-child affection, this book also underscores the importance of fostering imagination and wonderment while nurturing young minds.
--School Library Journal (starred review)

Barnett (The Important Thing About Margaret Wise Brown) offers a comic look at that famous childhood bedtime-delaying tactic, the difficult question...Arsenault's imaginative power enhances a thin, nevertheless enjoyable, text.
--Publishers Weekly

This is a clever launch pad for curious children and adults. The large trim size and double pages done in gouache, pencil, and watercolor, assembled digitally, are replete with details both realistic and fanciful.
--Booklist

Publisher: Bound to Stay Bound Books

Pub date: 2019-09-10

Length: 33 pages