Anything

K-Gr 3–Spare in words as well as art but rich in feeling, Stead’s first picture book captures intimate exchanges between a small child and her single dad, both white, on their new apartment’s very first “birthday.” Told that she can wish for three “Anythings,” the young narrator first wishes for a rainbow on the wall of her room, because “Rainbow is my favorite color.” Two other wishes, plus a little unpacking and a walk around the neighborhood, follow but that first night, startled awake by a passing firetruck, she makes one extra wish: “I want to go home.” Hoisting her up with a brisk “All aboard the train to home!” her dad takes her on a long journey, all around the small apartment once, and again, and then again until she drowsily asks if they’re home yet. “Yes,” he says. “Almost.” The next morning, for a very first breakfast in the sunlit kitchen area, one last “Anything” in response to Daddy’s question leads to a delicious surprise. Bursts of loosely brushed color artfully signal emotional highs and lows in the fluently drawn, fine-lined scenes of child and attentive parent, both usually in sandals or barefoot, rattling around their sparsely furnished new digs. Though the illustrator leaves lots of open space in the scenes to give the two small and lonely looks, together they do begin to seem increasingly at home by the end.