The Snowy Day

Story

The Snowy Day tells the story of Peter, a young boy who wakes one morning to find that snow has fallen overnight. He quickly puts on his snowsuit and goes outside to play. He’s not old enough to join the big boys for a snowball fight, so he makes snow angels, builds a snowman, and makes tracks in the snow. Will the snow still be there in the morning?

Why we chose it

A simply told story about the joy of snow, exploring it, playing in and hoping that it won’t disappear over night.

Where it came from

Ezra Jack Keats (1916-1983) grew up in a poor household without much money for art supplies. He worked as a commercial artist and never intended to get into children’s books, until he was asked to illustrate Jubilant for Sure by Elisabeth Hubbard Lansing in 1954.He was inspired by Asian art and haiku poetry, and Keats has said that he drew inspiration for this story from a story and photographs from a 1940 issue of Life magazine.

Where it went next

Prior to The Snowy Day, there were very few depictions of black children in children’s literature, and those that existed were often negative stereotypes. Keats noticed this when he was illustrating other people’s work and said that if he were to write, his character would be African-American and ‘my book would have him there simply because he should have been there all along’. It was criticised by some for ‘tokenism’ but reactions were overwhelmingly positive and The Snowy Day won the Caldecott Medal in 1963. The New York Public Library named it among its Books of the Century, Amazon Prime adapted it in 2016, and Peter also appeared on a series of stamps in the US in 2019.

Associated stories

Peter appears in further stories, such as Peter’s Chair (1967), A Letter to Amy (1968) and Pet Show (1972). Keats wrote many other stories too, such as My Dog is Lost (1960) and Regards to the Man in the Moon (1981). His books often featured children of different ethnicities and he paved the way for others to do the same.

The Ezra Jack Keats Foundation, established in 1964 and becoming active after his death, supports authors, illustrators, education, and libraries, and ‘works to advance diversity in children’s literature’. Every year the Ezra Jack Keats Award is given to a new author and illustrator