The Power of the Desire to Go Home: The Magic of Love and Imagination

This beau­ti­ful and heart­warm­ing pic­ture book, *Any­thing*, is a col­lab­o­ra­tion between two heavy­weight chil­dren’s book cre­ators: author Rebec­ca Stead is a tal­ent­ed young adult nov­el­ist who won the New­bery Medal for *When You Reach Me* and the Guardian Chil­dren’s Fic­tion Award for *Liar & Spy*; and the illus­tra­tor is Chi­nese-Amer­i­can illus­tra­tor Zhang Yiy­ing (…).Gracey ZhangIn 2025, she won the Calde­cott Hon­or for *Noo­dles on a Bicy­cle*, and her debut illus­trat­ed book, *Lala’s Words*, also won the Ezra Jack Keats Award for Best New Artist. In this new book, we encounter a lit­tle girl expe­ri­enc­ing a move and her car­ing father. The sto­ry, with its del­i­cate and gen­tle text and illus­tra­tions, presents an imag­i­na­tive “jour­ney home” that takes place indoors, show­cas­ing the unique and heal­ing mag­ic of love and imag­i­na­tion.

The sto­ry begins sim­ply: on the first day of mov­ing, the father pre­pares a choco­late cake for the new home and tells his daugh­ter that she can make three wish­es for any­thing. The girl first asks for a rain­bow, then wish­es for the world’s largest piz­za, and also hopes that “today is not Thurs­day”… These wish­es seem child­ish, but behind them lies the child’s effort to rebuild a sense of security—in the emp­ty, unfa­mil­iar apart­ment, hav­ing a rain­bow that belongs to her is clear­ly more effec­tive than any ver­bal com­fort.

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How­ev­er, beneath this seem­ing­ly light­heart­ed wish, the girl har­bored a deep­er, unspo­ken long­ing: to return to her old home, the old apart­ment with its large blue bath­tub and the pleas­ant­ly scent­ed clos­et. When she was awak­ened in the mid­dle of the night by the sirens of fire trucks, she final­ly mus­tered the courage to express her desire to “go home.” Her father did­n’t shy away; instead, he respond­ed with wis­dom and ten­der­ness: “The train home is about to depart!” So, he car­ried his daugh­ter, walk­ing around their new home again and again, com­plet­ing an emo­tion­al jour­ney inter­wo­ven with imag­i­na­tion and real­i­ty.

This seem­ing­ly sim­ple imag­i­na­tive game con­ceals a del­i­cate emo­tion­al exchange between par­ent and child and immense heal­ing pow­er. This is pre­cise­ly the theme Rebec­ca Stei­der has con­sis­tent­ly pur­sued in her work: how to find “home” amidst change, and how to tran­scend the lim­i­ta­tions and pain of real­i­ty with gen­uine emo­tion and imag­i­na­tion.

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Actu­al­ly, when I first read this book, I inex­plic­a­bly felt a unique bit­ter­ness and help­less­ness. I expe­ri­enced mov­ing more than ten times as a child, and I know how dif­fi­cult it is to adapt to a new life in a new place. For­tu­nate­ly, in most of those moves, the whole fam­i­ly was involved, and there was a joy­ful side to explor­ing the new home togeth­er. But in *Any­thing Will Do*, only the father and daugh­ter are there—where is the moth­er? Is any­one still liv­ing in the old house with the big blue bath­tub? Why are the father and daugh­ter mov­ing to the new apart­ment?… When the lit­tle girl says, “I want to go home,” I inex­plic­a­bly thought of the clas­sic film *Kramer vs. Kramer*, where the lit­tle boy asks his father (Dustin Hoff­man), “Where will my bed be? Where will my toys be?”… I also could­n’t help but think of Sid­ney Smith’s new book, *Do You Remem­ber?*, which also recounts his expe­ri­ence of mov­ing with his moth­er when he was eight years old. Both of the lat­ter sto­ries point to divorced and bro­ken fam­i­lies.

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As it turns out, I was­n’t over­think­ing it. In her cre­ative inter­view, Rebec­ca frankly admit­ted that the idea for this sto­ry came from her own upbring­ing. Rebec­ca­’s par­ents did indeed divorce when she was young. Her moth­er stayed in their orig­i­nal apart­ment, while her father moved out with her, and they con­tin­ued to move sev­er­al times after­ward. How­ev­er, both par­ents deeply loved Rebec­ca and agreed to share the respon­si­bil­i­ty of car­ing for their daugh­ter’s upbring­ing as much as pos­si­ble. There­fore, her father’s new apart­ments were always not far from her moth­er’s, gen­er­al­ly with­in walk­ing dis­tance, and Rebec­ca often trav­eled between the two.

As a writer born and raised in New York City, her debut nov­el, *First Light*, and her first pic­ture book, *Any­thing Will Do*, were writ­ten around the same time. While the two sto­ries dif­fer in form, their core themes are quite sim­i­lar: both are about how grow­ing chil­dren find emo­tion­al sup­port and secu­ri­ty amidst change and uncer­tain­ty. Her sec­ond nov­el, *The Mys­te­ri­ous Let­ter*, which won her the New­bery Medal, fea­tures Miran­da, a sixth-grade girl grow­ing up in a sin­gle-par­ent fam­i­ly. Through the nar­ra­tive device of “time trav­el,” and draw­ing par­al­lels to Miran­da’s (and Rebec­ca­’s) favorite clas­sic, *A Wrin­kle in Time*, she seems to be express­ing a long­ing for a com­plete fam­i­ly. The con­cept of “home” takes on a more sym­bol­ic mean­ing through this expe­ri­ence of tra­vers­ing time and space.

Nov­els and pic­ture books are not oppos­ing forces in her cre­ative jour­ney, but rather two sides that reflect each oth­er: nov­els explore a more com­plex, ratio­nal, and diverse world, while pic­ture books touch the hearts of younger read­ers in a more con­cise and emo­tion­al­ly direct way. The wish rit­u­al used in “Any­thing Will Do” demon­strates, in a way that chil­dren can direct­ly per­ceive, how love and imag­i­na­tion work togeth­er to pave a smooth path for the grow­ing mind.

Pub­lished in 2007, *The First Light* includes a ded­i­ca­tion that reads: “Ded­i­cat­ed to my moth­er, Deb­o­rah, whose love warmed the cold­est cor­ners of the world; and to my father, David, the ever-stead­fast guardian of faith.” Judg­ing from Rebec­ca­’s heart­felt ded­i­ca­tion to her par­ents at near­ly forty years old, she ful­ly under­stands their choice, and they could per­haps serve as role mod­els for divorced par­ents. How­ev­er, it seems Rebec­ca still has some­thing to say, some­thing she needs to let go of.

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Back in 2006, she had actu­al­ly com­plet­ed the first draft of her pic­ture book, *Any­thing Will Do*, and was active­ly seek­ing pub­li­ca­tion oppor­tu­ni­ties. Inter­est­ing­ly, while she was mak­ing great strides in her nov­el writ­ing career and win­ning numer­ous awards, her pic­ture book man­u­script was repeat­ed­ly reject­ed. She must have cher­ished this sto­ry deeply; per­haps it expressed too much of her own thoughts. For near­ly 20 years, she con­tin­ued to pol­ish it and seek pub­li­ca­tion oppor­tu­ni­ties. Until one day, a wise edi­tor she met gave her a very insight­ful sug­ges­tion:Although it’s a very touch­ing sto­ry, it touch­es on two things: a child mov­ing and par­ents divorc­ing. Per­haps we could choose to focus on just one of them? Great pic­ture books often only tell one sto­ry, right?—Rebec­ca felt enlight­ened and deci­sive­ly chose the for­mer, allow­ing more poten­tial young read­ers to find con­nec­tions with their own expe­ri­ences in the sto­ry.

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With the edi­tor’s help, Rebec­ca was for­tu­nate enough to meet the per­fect visu­al col­lab­o­ra­tor for this story—Canadian-Chinese illus­tra­tor Zhang Yiy­ing. Zhang Yiy­ing’s skill­ful and flex­i­ble use of col­or leaves a deep impres­sion. In her rep­re­sen­ta­tive work, *Lala’s Lan­guage Mag­ic*, she suc­cess­ful­ly show­cased the vibrant and imag­i­na­tive world of the lit­tle girl Lala, and del­i­cate­ly por­trayed the com­plex and sub­tle bond between Lala and her moth­er. Dur­ing the cre­ation of this book, Rebec­ca felt that Zhang Yiy­ing’s illus­tra­tions pos­sessed a dream­like and mag­i­cal effect, while the edi­tor remarked that she “excels at bring­ing warmth and won­der to com­plex and rich con­cepts.” As it turned out, she was indeed the best choice to illus­trate this sto­ry.

Zhang Yiy­ing’s illus­tra­tions clev­er­ly enhance the pow­er of the text in “Any­thing Is Fine.” She uses col­or vari­a­tions to reflect the char­ac­ters’ emo­tion­al fluc­tu­a­tions: when the father and child inter­act hap­pi­ly, vibrant col­ors are “splashed” across the page, cre­at­ing a daz­zling effect; when the child feels scared or sad, the illus­tra­tions shift to white space, pale col­ors, or dark­er hues, as if the col­ors have fad­ed from the page. The large areas of white space and the sim­ple, clear col­ors clear­ly depict the lit­tle girl’s emo­tion­al tra­jec­to­ry: from the ini­tial unfa­mil­iar­i­ty and cold­ness of her new home, to the warmth and rich­ness she imag­ines, and final­ly to the peace and sta­bil­i­ty after accept­ing real­i­ty. In par­tic­u­lar, the grad­ual spread of warm col­ors through­out the new home seems to rep­re­sent the process of inner secu­ri­ty being built lit­tle by lit­tle, direct­ly and emo­tion­al­ly pre­sent­ing the mean­ing of this jour­ney home.

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The father’s cre­ative “home train” game is the most vibrant and heart­warm­ing high­light of the entire sto­ry, and it’s also high­ly sym­bol­ic, seem­ing­ly chal­leng­ing or expand­ing the tra­di­tion­al def­i­n­i­tion of “home.” “Home” is more than just a phys­i­cal space; even a new­ly moved-in apart­ment, because of the father’s love and effort, ulti­mate­ly becomes “home” through the infu­sion of love. This isn’t sim­ply about solv­ing prob­lems, but about cre­at­ing a sense of home through emo­tion­al con­nec­tion and com­pan­ion­ship. “Home” is a source of secu­ri­ty and emo­tion­al sup­port. Whether it’s the anx­i­ety of a new envi­ron­ment or the chal­lenges of fac­ing life’s changes, “home” pro­vides the safe foun­da­tion need­ed to cope with dif­fi­cul­ties.

For Rebec­ca, now a moth­er of two boys, despite expe­ri­enc­ing numer­ous moves dur­ing her child­hood, per­haps she was try­ing to express a spe­cial under­stand­ing of “home” and deep grat­i­tude for her con­sid­er­ate father. In the inter­view, Rebec­ca said, “My dad and I moved many times, but he always put in a lot of effort to make each move spe­cial… In real life, I did wish for a rain­bow in my room. I remem­ber my dad actu­al­ly did it—he paint­ed a rain­bow all over the room. At the time, I thought it was crazy and out­ra­geous.”“

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“Any­thing Will Do” is not just a sto­ry for chil­dren; it also evokes mem­o­ries and emo­tion­al res­o­nance in every adult read­er, remind­ing them of their own child­hood. Every­one has had sim­i­lar expe­ri­ences of “wish­es,” and every­one has gone through the search and strug­gle for secu­ri­ty and belong­ing. Read­ing this book, adult read­ers may also real­ize that the deep­est con­nec­tion between par­ents and chil­dren is often not about grand promis­es or mate­r­i­al gifts, but about the patience and sin­cer­i­ty with which par­ents stand by their chil­dren through emo­tion­al ups and downs.

Whether for fam­i­lies expe­ri­enc­ing a move or oth­er sig­nif­i­cant changes, or for adult read­ers seek­ing a deep­er under­stand­ing of chil­dren’s inner world, this book offers invalu­able spir­i­tu­al strength. It reminds us that true home­com­ing is not sim­ply arriv­ing at a fixed loca­tion, but rather achiev­ing rec­on­cil­i­a­tion between the inner self and reality—a rec­on­cil­i­a­tion that requires the com­bined efforts of love and imag­i­na­tion.

Writ­ten by A‑Jia on May 25, 2025 in Bei­jing

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