Waiting

Five small toys – an owl, a pig, a bear, a puppy, and a rabbit – sit on a windowsill and simply wait. Each one waits for something different: the moon, the rain, the wind, the snow. And the rabbit? He waits for nothing in particular. He just likes the quiet act of waiting and watching the world outside.

Henkes builds the story with deliberate simplicity, almost like a tiny Japanese poem where meaning lives in the pauses. The book captures what waiting feels like in childhood—slow, intense, full of anticipation and imagination. The illustrations carry the same calm as the text: soft nursery shades, open space, gentle lines. This visual clarity and emotional honesty earned Waiting both a Caldecott Honor and a Geisel Honor.

As time passes and the seasons shift, little surprises appear on the windowsill, and new friends arrive. But the heart of the book isn’t in what happens—it’s in the act of waiting itself, which becomes a kind of play and a way of seeing the world. Henkes shows that sometimes all you need is to sit still, look out the window, and let the world unfold.