Kids Are Actually Really Funny, Wise, Weird, And Philosophical

Questions Without Answers is simply a activity of choral accuracy unwittingly composed by hundreds of children, edited by myself, and illustrated by Liana Finck.

My main purpose, successful assembling nan matter of nan book, is to situation nan celebrated depiction of children arsenic adorable idiots, alternatively portraying them arsenic they are: intelligent, intuitive, inventive, weird, eloquent, philosophical, funny, wise.

When my boy was very young, I wrote down immoderate of his astir absorbing questions. (What does a gargoyle say? Do you for illustration windows? What’s nan achromatic worldly wrong a legume called?) I held onto nan database for astir 5 years, until I thought of crowdsourcing much questions and making a book of them.

In 2021 I hired 2 investigation assistants and began crowdsourcing questions online. Together we obtained much than 2 1000 questions. I winnowed nan database to astir a hundred. By past nan superb Liana had agreed to do nan art.

The book is my first collaborative book, but it’s akin to my different activity successful that it’s willing successful brevity, compression, time, memory, and death.

If there’s thing I learned from this book, this is it:

Kids are interesting. Once I learned what children are really like, I wanted to create an artifact of their weird eloquence, which was specified a astonishment to maine erstwhile I yet noticed it.

Kids aren’t cutesy. These questions are tiny by nan word’s original definition, swift and piercing. They trim to nan quick.

Kids get death. Young children are present pinch us, yet they support an easy entree to nan supernatural realm—they locomotion successful some worlds. My son’s astir absorbing questions each seemed, successful immoderate way, to beryllium astir death. Their easiness pinch nan abyss comforts me.

Kids are different. We each clasp immoderate of our kid-ness—but suffer astir of it.

–Sarah Manguso

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Images from nan book Questions Without Answers by Sarah Manguso, Illustrated by Liana Finck. Text copyright © 2025 by Sarah Manguso. Illustrations copyright © 2025 by Liana Finck. Published by Hogarth, an imprint of Random House, a section of Penguin Random House LLC. All authorities reserved.