Anything (Chronicle, 4–8 years) is an introspective, sensitively conveyed picture book about a dad helping a child through difficult transitions in a new apartment. The ambiguity in Rebecca Stead’s (2010 Newbery Medalist for When You Reach Me) text, accompanied by Gracey Zhang’s spare illustrations, leaves room for readers to imagine what changes the characters might be dealing with. For more books about parents, see also our list "Parents and Children" in this issue of Notes.

1. Rebecca, what brought about writing your first picture book?

Photo (c) Faye Bender.

Rebecca Stead: This may sound silly, but — I had a picture-book-shaped idea. In other words, a story idea that felt 1) potentially meaningful and 2) possible to build without a lot of words. Most of my book ideas are more like floaty clouds of potential story that I chase for years (those turn into novels). The story of Anything was more like finding a stone on the beach and putting it in my pocket.

And then it stayed in my pocket for a long time, because no one wanted it. I wrote the first draft in 2007, I think. Every few years I would share it with an editor somewhere, and she would tell me why it wasn’t a picture book: too subtle, nothing good to draw, etc. In 2020, at the suggestion of another writer, Laurel Snyder, I shared it with an editor at Chronicle Books. Chronicle wanted it and suggested that Gracey Zhang might be a great illustrator for the story. I could not feel luckier.

2. Gracey, how did you decide when to add color and when to use only ballpoint pen in the illustrations?

Gracey Zhang: I did a few different experiments for this story, and for whatever reason, I found myself gravitating towards the “scribble-y” quality of ballpoint pen. I also wanted the space of the apartment to fill with color as the child starts to feel more at home. I had done some experiments as well with different limited color palettes, and this very basic rainbow palette is what ended up feeling most right.

3. When creating the book, did you have a specific interpretation in mind of the reason for the characters’ heartache?

RS: It’s not exactly heartache to me, but there is loss here. This is a girl feeling in-between. She wants the familiar things, like the spicy smell inside the coat closet and the blue bathtub in her old apartment, which tell her she’s home. And she can’t have those things, but that’s okay.

GZ: I thought a lot about how when you’re a child, you ask a lot of your parents’ tolerance. Not necessarily because you have legitimate concerns but because you want to see them validate and comfort you. Sometimes as a kid you can really push it, but really I thought about the father’s intentionality and patience.

4. If you could wish for three “Anythings” like the narrator does, what would they be?

RS: Toast and butter, something green outside the window, and the sound of voices in the next room.

GZ: I wish I could be 2.5 inches taller; I wish to have a shrimp spring roll whenever I want; I wish my feet wouldn’t hurt in heeled shoes.

5. What’s something a parent or parent figure has done to make a transition easier for you?

RS: My dad, like the dad in Anything, actually did paint a rainbow in one of our (many) apartments together. (My mom, who has lived in the same apartment for almost fifty-eight years, did me the great favor of never moving.)

GZ: I think I thrived on transitions, I loved anything different and new, so I never required much from my parents when it came to changes.

Though they were normally quite strict, sometimes they had surprising tendencies to let me get away with certain things. I remember drawing on the walls of my bedroom behind my door, thinking I would get in trouble, but the paint remained year after year. The freedoms they allowed me that surprised me then are something I look back at fondly now.

From the May 2025 issue of Notes from the Horn Book.