Meet the author

Rebecca Stead.

Writer · United States

The Newbery Medal-winning author of When You Reach Me, whose first picture book Anything brings her feel for the ache of change and the courage of an honest wish to the very young.

Rebecca Stead is an American writer best known for warm, quietly clever fiction for older children, and the winner of the 2010 Newbery Medal for When You Reach Me, the New York Times-bestselling novel that also gave her a reputation for stories where small everyday details carry real emotional weight. Her middle-grade novels, among them Liar & Spy, Goodbye Stranger and First Light, are prized for their tenderness and their trust in young readers. Anything (2025), luminously illustrated by Gracey Zhang, is her first picture book: a gentle, bittersweet story of a father, a daughter and a new home, in which the honest wish a child is almost too frightened to say aloud turns out to matter more than any magic. A writer with an unusually sure feel for the ache of change.