About Just Because by Isabelle Arsenault

March 15th 2021

Isabelle Arsenault is an internationally renowned children’s book illustrator, three times winner of the Governor General’s Award for Children’s Literature, and three of her picture books were named as The New York Times’s Best Illustrated Books of the Year. Isabelle has been longlisted for the 2021 Kate Greenaway Medal for her illustrations for Just Because, written by Mac Barnett and published by Walker Books.

Isabelle explains more about the processes she used when working on Just Because. 

Working on this project has been such a blast, for me. From the beginning to the end, I felt encouraged by everyone to have fun with this story, and I did!

Working with inspiring people like Mac Barnett and the wonderful team at Candlewick really helped. It was a dream team to me. The whole thing was like a dream, you know, when everything falls right into place? And the work seems to appear all by itself? It’s rare, but it happens sometimes. 

I received Mac Barnett’s manuscript along with a suggestion for the layout, and two visual references/inspirations. These were old images from an encyclopedia I think, and right then, I felt we were on the same page with this book. I was inspired by this cold factual form and liked the way it contrasted with the content, somehow. The little girl’s questions were serious, but the answers her father was making up were absurd and funny. I thought representing these seriously was perfect. So I worked with a realistic approach, trying to make these senseless images believable. 

I worked with gouache, coloured pencils and watercolour to create the artwork. I associated a different colour to each of the questions in the book, creating a visual link between questions and answers. The question-pages appear dimmer, as the light is turned down in the little girl’s bedroom, and the only colour is this big bold circle featuring her question addressed to her dad. 

The following page is her dad’s answer-spread where the same colour is used differently throughout the spread, with more nuancing and details. At the end of the book, colours are used in another way that breaks this convention, and brings the story to a more poetic level.

While working on this book, I had a quote by Albert Einstein playing in my head: “Imagination is more important than knowledge”. When I was about 10 years old, Einstein was my hero. I read many books about his life and I had posters of him in my bedroom. Hehe. I even had this exact quote framed and hanging on my wall. I found this sentence, coming from such a brilliant man, truly comforting. I hope this book could bring the same inspiring feeling to young readers. 

I dedicated the book to my father. When I was a kid, he had answers to all the questions my brother, my sister and I would have. He never underestimated any questioning and always took time to answer at the best of his knowledge. Politics, geography, history, sciences, arts—there wasn't a field where he would be stuck. My father was also good at drawing and painting. In a few lines, he would make a character appear. I was impressed by that too! I believe that my interest in drawing stems from there, and that through my own illustrations, I have always sought to create this kind of wonder. 

Today, as a parent myself, I feel I'm not even close to answering half of my kid's questions without double checking on internet first—like the father in our book, I compensate with my imagination!

Just Because is out now. 

See all books on the Kate Greenaway longlist.