What Deep Questions Have the Kids in Your Life Asked?

“Does the beingness end? Like, is determination a wall?” my lad Anton asked maine erstwhile helium was five. Author Sarah Manguso and cartoonist Liana Finck recovered themselves drawn to this benignant of childlike curiosity, truthful they gathered thousands of questions from kids (including their own) and illustrated their favorites successful a beauteous book, Questions Without Answers. Here are a fewer pages, positive a Q&A with the authors…

Joanna: Was it hard to constrictive down the database of questions for the book? I retrieve my sons asking so many, like, ‘Do you person to wage the slope to get money?’ and ‘Why can’t I spot my eyes?!’

Sarah: Certain juxtapositions marque idiosyncratic questions look goofier oregon much bittersweet. A kid volition inquire you if clowns pee blue, close aft they inquire you erstwhile you’re going to die. My favorites successful our publication include, ‘Was ma a babe once, too? Did I play with her?’

Liana: Here are the latest from the database I support connected my telephone of questions my three-year-old has asked: Do you get a lollipop erstwhile you get retired of jail? Who enactment the mustache connected your face? What colour is it wrong you? Why bash squirrels usually not talk? Do older babies portion pome foodstuff retired of their mommies? There are truthful galore more. I’m refraining.

I loved the book’s instauration astir however kids are superb observers. Sarah, you wrote, ‘I learned that children are dizzyingly fast-learning engines of creation and experiment. I watched my kid marque consciousness of the satellite not arsenic a simple-minded cherub but arsenic a measuring, remembering machine.’ What helped you travel to this realization?

Sarah: I liked articulating wherefore these questions fascinate maine — successful a nutshell, it’s that kids are hardworking empiricists. When helium was four, my lad asked maine 3 questions each astatine once: When I was successful your body, did you cognize me? Was I excited to conscionable you? Did I marque the world? All 3 made it into the book, successful order.

Liana: Sarah’s intro is similar a beardown bluish shadiness down the questions successful the book.

I teared up portion speechmaking the book, particularly astatine the question, ‘When you die, tin I travel with you?’

Sarah: Many of the questions determination maine deeply. For me, a reliable tearjerker is, ‘After they hide you, erstwhile bash they travel backmost and excavation you retired again?’

I retrieve astatine my grandmother’s funeral, the vicar said, ‘Now your grandma volition beryllium with your gramps successful the graveyard, oregon wherever they are successful the large mystery.’ I loved that phrasing — truthful overmuch of beingness is mysterious, nary substance however aged we are.

Sarah: That vicar understood that kids don’t request to beryllium protected from the large mystery. I retrieve asking my parent wherever babies came from, but each I retrieve of her reply is: You person to person a peculiar benignant of egg. For years, I wondered what benignant of ovum I’d person to devour and if I mightiness devour it by accident.

Liana: All I tin retrieve contiguous is that alternatively than making maine little acrophobic of monsters, the Sesame Street characters each morphed into genuinely terrifying monsters successful my imagination.

What are immoderate different children’s books you like?

Liana: The ones I grew up with, by William Steig, Maurice Sendak, Ruth Krauss, and Maira Kalman, due to the fact that they are (1) mind-blowing and (2) truthful heavy successful determination for me. Two caller discoveries, some cosmic, are: Time is simply a Flower by Julie Morstad, and Here We Are by Oliver Jeffers.

Sarah: I emotion Syd Hoff’s publication The Horse successful Harry’s Room. Harry tells the people astir his imaginary equine during show-and-tell, and the different kids laughter astatine him. Then the teacher says, ‘Sometimes reasoning astir a happening is the aforesaid arsenic having it.’ For smaller kids, I emotion Margaret Wise Brown’s publication I Like Stars, which isn’t astir arsenic fashionable arsenic her blockbusters Goodnight Moon and The Runaway Bunny. Reading this publication — particularly if you’re slumber deprived, arsenic astir caller parents are — is simply a psychedelic experience.

Thank you, Sarah and Liana! Questions Without Answers is beautiful.

P.S. Sex-positive parenting for prudes and five children’s books connected grief.

(Photo by Alfred Eisenstaedt, 1963, taken astatine a Parisian puppet theatre astatine the infinitesimal that St. George slays the dragon.)