Keats departs from realism in his portrayal of the snow in The Snowy Day, but this departure paradoxically makes the story ring more true. Reynold Ruffins, one of Keats’s artistic contemporaries and a fellow picture-book artist, wrote in an anthology of Keats’s work that Keats would spend days pondering different hand-dipped papers, trying to choose the right one for an image he was composing.Īn illustration from The Snowy Day (Courtesy of The Ezra Jack Keats Foundation) Keats cut pieces of beautiful paper from all around the world-Sweden, Japan, Italy-and glued them together to make images worth looking at over and over again. They include checkered oilcloth used for lining cabinets to make the mother’s dress, marbleized paper, gum erasers for snowflakes, watercolor for bubbles, splatter painting with India ink, and more.
Keats’s vibrant collage illustrations bring this simple plot to life. Even before readers crack the book open, they know that more than enough of the white stuff has fallen for snow angels, snowmen, snowball fights, and, of course, footprints with your toes pointed out “ like this” and with your toes pointed in “ like that.” Readers sense Peter’s unbridled joy as he engages in all these activities he is so enamored of the snow that he tucks a snowball into his pocket before he goes inside, hoping to save it for later. The cover of The Snowy Day features the main character, Peter, swathed from head to toe in his red snowsuit, dwarfed by undulating mounds of snow. When there’s enough snow to slow everything and everyone down, it might mean stress and work for the adults, but for most kids, it’s time to go out and play. Whether you live in a place where it always snows or a place where it rarely snows, the idea of winter’s first snowfall brings delight and anticipation. What makes this quiet picture book so well loved?įor starters, there’s something inherently magical about a snowy day. That’s more than The Cat in the Hat, Where the Wild Things Are, Charlotte’s Web, and even Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Kids and families love Ezra Jack Keats’s The Snowy Day so much that they’ve checked it out of the New York Public Library system more than any other book in the NYPL’s 125 years of existence-485,583 times since it was published in 1962. COURTESY OF THE EZRA JACK KEATS FOUNDATION
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