It’s a simple question that most kids have probably asked. “Why is the sky blue?”

North Bend dad Josh Tuininga explores the answers in his recently published children’s book, which he created with help from his twin girls.

“Why Blue?” is about wonder, inquisitiveness, and finding answers within yourself.

A North Bend resident for 10 years, Josh, 37, and his wife Lisa have two daughters, Clara and Hazel, both 7.  He studied fine art at the Art Institute of Chicago, and his day job is a designer for a company in North Bend, The Medium, which he and Lisa used to run out of their house, but is now located in an office on West North Bend Way.

“Art has always been very much a part of our lives,” said Lisa.

The book was a side project, an idea that took on a life of its own.

“It’s been something I’ve always wanted to do,” Josh said. “I’ve always liked looking at children’s books. After my kids were born,  I read a lot of material to them. I always (felt) like, ‘I could do this!”

He wrote and illustrated “Why Blue?,” working out of his studio, a big yellow bus parked across his lawn. The girls, Josh said, “definitely had a hand it it.”

One of his daughters posed for the paintings—”She was good at sitting still,” said Josh.

And when he had a tough question for what to do next, “they’d help me make decisions.”

In the story, a young girls asks the question, meeting townspeople and listening to their different answers.

“She isn’t quite satisfied with the opinions she’s getting,” Josh said. “She realizes it’s up to her to make her own decision.”

There are some morals inside, explains Josh.

“It’s up to them to make up their own minds about the world we’re living in,” he said. “In this day and age, we’re bombarded by all this information, and they needed to be reminded of that. And for parents to chill a little bit.”

“There’s no parent in this book,” he added. It’s a child’s journey.

Writing and illustrating a book was a challenge, more so than Josh expected.

“I thought it would take me a month or two,” he said. It really ended up taking almost two years.

Writing, for someone who wasn’t a professional writer before, was tough. And a lot of art ended up on the cutting room floor.

“I painted myself into a corner a couple of times,” said Josh. “That’s the reason I want to do it again. I learned a lot by doing it.”

Josh works in pencil first, then ink, then scans drawings and finishes the colors, either digitally or in pastel or paint.

He’s got ideas for other books. But undertaking a second children’s tale means a big time commitment.

The two girls agree there are some similarities between themselves and the girl in the book. They’ve been inspired by their dad’s project.

“They make books themselves now,” said Josh.

“Why Blue?” was published in April by Xist Publishing. Find out more about the book at http://www.whybluebook.com/.

It’s available at Birches Habitat in North Bend, several bookstores in Seattle, and on Amazon. Josh’s publisher is working to make it available at libraries.

Seth Truscott/Staff Photo

Josh Tuininga works out of this vintage bus studio on his property near Mount Si. Below, the cover and art from Tuininga’s book, “Why Blue?”