befus's Full Review: Ezra Jack Keats - The Snowy Day
This past Friday, March 11th, my young daughter and I shared a beautiful moment. While a lovely light snowfall drifted gently past the windows of her room, we cuddled together on the floor, reading the classic picture book The Snowy Day. What made the moment particularly touching wasn't just the combination of the snowy day outdoors and the snowy day celebrated in this brilliant picture book. March 11th is in fact the birthday of Ezra Jack Keats, the book's renowned author and illustrator.
I had read this fact in a literary calendar, and purposefully checked out a copy of The Snowy Day to enjoy with my little girl during the week of Keats' birthday. The fact that she herself picked the book out of the stack on that particular morning made for a happy "coincidence."
The Snowy Day was not the first Keats book our family has enjoyed, but it may remain one of our favorites. It is also arguably Keats' best-known, loved, and awarded book for children. Published in 1962, it won the coveted Caldecott Medal for 1963. It also established Keats as a writer and illustrator who brought to the forefront characters and locations not often celebrated in American picture books at that time...namely kids of diverse ethnic backgrounds playing in urban cityscapes.
The story itself is simple, elegant and charming. The writing is good, but the art is superb. If you've been at all familiar with American children's books in the past forty years, then you probably recognize Keats' artwork. The cover photo (above) of young Peter dressed in his red snowsuit and looking with his interest at his own footprints is somewhat iconic in the world of picture books.
Written for very young children (preschoolers will especially delight in this one) the story is a simple celebration of a snowy day.
One winter morning Peter woke up and looked out the window. Snow had fallen during the night. It covered everything as far as he could see.
We follow Peter as he plays in the snowfall, pointing his toes in and out to make interesting footprints (crunch, crunch, crunch); dragging his feet to make long tracks, picking up a stick and smacking a tree so that the snow falls on his head (plop! -- my daughter's favorite part); making a snowman and snow angels. He even pretends he's a mountain climber and scales a big heap of snow, sliding down with great arm-waving glee.
Keats' illustrations often utilize a combination of gouache and collage. I believe that is the technique used here. Peter, a young African-American boy, is striking in his red suit against the mountains of white snow. The red snowsuit makes an especially bright spot in a book filled with whites, blues, and grays. Creative paper cut outs combine with other interesting art techniques, like spatter painting, to give the book real appeal to even the youngest of art lovers.
At the end of his beautiful snowy day, Peter tries to keep some of the snow with him...he packs it into a ball and puts it in his pocket. Once in his warm house, he tells his mother about his day while she helps him out of his clothes and into the bath. Peter is sad to discover that the snowball is not in his pocket when he checks before bed. His sadness translates into a dream that the sun comes out and melts all the snow away. How happy he is when he wakes up to find that instead, it is snowing again! In the last spread, we see Peter and a friend walking together through huge piles of snow, while fresh flakes (pink, blue and silvery-white) fall from the sky.
My daughter loves this book. Its very simplicity makes it a perfect choice as a read-aloud for very young children. She can relate to almost all the elements of the story (and she LOVES snow anyway!) and to the simple emotions of happiness and sadness that Peter feels. She also loves the page where Peter climbs the hill and slides down, and we use that page as a reinforcement of what she's been learning lately about opposites.
As I mentioned, March 11th was Keats' birthday. He was born Jacob Katz in 1916, the son of Jewish Polish immigrants in Brooklyn, and died in 1983. His life story, touching and in many ways a kind of classic "American life" (as a young man, he painted murals for the Works Progress Administration created by FDR's New Deal, and he also illustrated backgrounds for Captain Marvel comic books!) is worth reading about and celebrating. You can find a good mini-biography on www.ezra-jack-keats.org (to which I am indebted for all of the biographical information here). Among other things, this website showcases some of Ezra's fine art, links to other sites about him and inspired by him, and lists of the many awards he won. In all, he wrote and/or illustrated well over 80 books for children, including several more about Peter. Many of those books are beloved, but perhaps none as beloved as The Snowy Day.
Happy Birthday, Ezra! And thank you.
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The book, published by Viking Press, is currently available in several editions, including hardback, paperback, board book, and audio.
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