We Are All Made From Stars: Marc Majewski Illustrates Benedikt Lehnert’s Picture Book About Life, Death and Renewal
We Are All Made From Stars illustrated by Marc Majewski
We Are All Made From Stars: A Picture Book About Life, Change, and Renewal is a 2026 children’s book written by Benedikt Lehnert and illustrated by Marc Majewski. Published by Little Gestalten, the book uses atoms, energy and stardust to introduce children to ideas of life, death, belonging, change and renewal.
Rather than giving a specifically religious explanation of death, We Are All Made From Stars looks towards science, nature and the universe. Its central idea is simple but enormous: the atoms and energy that make us do not simply disappear. They transform and become part of something new.
Marc’s sweeping painted illustrations turn that idea into landscapes filled with stars, flowers, forests, rivers, animals, weather and people — connecting the enormous scale of the universe with the smallest moments of everyday life.
View We Are All Made From Stars at Gestalten.
What is We Are All Made From Stars about?
We Are All Made From Stars illustrated by Marc Majewski
We Are All Made From Stars is a picture book about life, death, transformation and the cycle of nature, written for children in a way that can also resonate with adults.
As Gestalten explains, the story introduces children to the idea that atoms and energy never disappear but continually transform into something new.
This gives Benedikt Lehnert a way to approach one of childhood’s biggest questions — what happens when something or someone dies? — without relying upon a particular religion.
Instead, the book connects us to the natural world and ultimately to the universe itself. The atoms within people, animals, trees and landscapes are part of a much larger physical cycle. Endings can therefore also be beginnings.
Gestalten describes the book as both scientific and spiritual in tone, combining scientific ideas about matter and energy with a broader emotional story about belonging.
It is this combination that makes We Are All Made From Stars particularly interesting as a children’s book about explaining death through science and nature.
Marc Majewski’s illustrations for We Are All Made From Stars
French illustrator and picture-book maker Marc Majewski creates the visual world of We Are All Made From Stars through exuberant colour, painted texture and expansive natural landscapes.
Marc fills the book with enormous night skies, shooting stars, wildflower meadows, mountains, rivers, forests, gardens and changing weather.
In one image, children cycle beneath a spectacular blue sky filled with stars and comets. Elsewhere, people run through an almost endless green landscape. A dog explores among flowers. Children move beside rivers and through woodland. Rain and wind sweep across figures who become tiny against the scale of the environment.
The imagery continually moves between the cosmic and the intimate.
A vast universe of stars can be followed by something as small as a hand touching flowers. Human figures are rarely allowed to dominate the landscape; instead, people, plants, animals, water and weather all appear to belong to the same interconnected world.
That visual approach closely reflects the book’s underlying idea: we are not separate from nature or the universe, but physically part of it.
See more of Marc Majewski’s work and explore his illustration for We Are All Made From Stars.
Why are Marc Majewski’s illustrations so well suited to the story?
We Are All Made From Stars illustrated by Marc Majewski
Marc’s work has long explored nature, childhood, imagination and wonder, making him particularly well matched to Benedikt’s story.
His loose painted marks give forests and flower-filled landscapes a sense of movement rather than photographic realism. Colour is heightened: blues become intensely blue, fields vibrate with green and flowers create dense patterns of orange, yellow, red and white.
It means scientific ideas such as atoms, energy and transformation never become diagrammatic or instructional.
Instead, Marc translates them into an emotional visual language children can experience.
Stars, rivers, flowers and people become recurring parts of a single environment. The result feels simultaneously earthly and cosmic — precisely the territory suggested by the title We Are All Made From Stars.
We Are All Made From Stars illustrated by Marc Majewski
Who is Marc Majewski?
Marc is an award-winning illustrator and picture-book maker based in Berlin.
His books include Butterfly Child, Bridges, As Edward Imagined and Parks, and his work is characterised by expressive painting, bold colour and a close relationship with the natural world.
According to Gestalten, Marc’s books, including Butterfly Child, have been translated into more than ten languages.
His work has also been recognised internationally within children’s publishing and illustration, including selections for the Bologna Children’s Book Fair and the Society of Illustrators in New York.
Who wrote We Are All Made From Stars?
Benedikt Lehnert is an author and award-winning designer whose work explores creativity, courage and hope.
He teaches at Princeton University and, according to Gestalten, lives and works between Princeton, Montreal and Ireland.
For We Are All Made From Stars, Benedikt takes concepts that can initially appear difficult for children — death, impermanence and our physical relationship to the universe — and makes them understandable through the idea of transformation.
Rather than saying that something simply ends, the book asks young readers to consider how matter and energy continue.
That turns a book about death into something broader: a story about continuity, connection and belonging.
Is We Are All Made From Stars a book about death?
Yes — but death is only part of its subject.
We Are All Made From Stars is equally a book about life, change, atoms, energy, nature, renewal and the interconnectedness of everything around us.
For parents looking for a children’s picture book that discusses death without being tied to a particular religious belief, its combination of scientific thinking, emotional storytelling and illustration offers an unusual approach.
The book does not present science and spirituality as opposites. Instead, it finds a sense of wonder within the scientific fact that the matter making up our bodies originated elsewhere in the universe.
In that sense, the title is more than a metaphor.
Who publishes We Are All Made From Stars?
We Are All Made From Stars is published by Little Gestalten, the children’s publishing imprint of Gestalten.
Little Gestalten publishes highly visual books introducing younger readers to subjects including nature, creativity, culture, emotions and the wider world.
The publisher describes We Are All Made From Stars as:
“A Picture Book About Life, Change, and Renewal.”
Explore more titles from Little Gestalten.
We Are All Made From Stars — book details
Title:We Are All Made From Stars
Subtitle:A Picture Book About Life, Change, and Renewal
Author: Benedikt Lehnert
Illustrator: Marc Majewski
Publisher: Little Gestalten
Release date: July 2026
Category: Children’s Books
Format: Full-colour hardcover, stitch bound
Size: 26 × 21 cm
Pages: 32
Language: English
ISBN: 978-3-96704-784-4
The English edition can be found on the official Gestalten page for We Are All Made From Stars, alongside a German-language edition.
Why We Are All Made From Stars stands out
There are many children’s books about grief and many books explaining science to young readers. We Are All Made From Stars occupies a particularly interesting space between the two.
Benedikt uses atoms, energy and stardust to talk about mortality without reducing the story to a science lesson. Marc then gives those ideas an emotional visual world filled with movement, colour and natural abundance.
Together, words and images suggest that people belong to something much larger than themselves.
From atoms to stars, forests to flowers and life to death, everything is connected through continual change.
That makes We Are All Made From Stars not simply a picture book about death, but a beautifully illustrated children’s book about what it means to be alive and part of the universe.
