Just Because - Hardcover

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.