The Snowy Day is a 1962 children's

Children's literature

Children's literature is for readers and listeners up to about age twelve; it is often defined in four different ways: books written by children, books written for children, books chosen by children, or books chosen for children. It is often illustrated. The term is used in senses which sometimes...

 picture book

Picture book

A picture book combines visual and verbal narratives in a book format, most often aimed at young children. The images in picture books use a range of media such as oil paints, acrylics, watercolor and pencil.Two of the earliest books with something like the format picture books still retain now...

 by American author and illustrator Ezra Jack Keats

Ezra Jack Keats

Ezra Jack Keats , Caldecott-winning author of The Snowy Day, was one of the most important children's literature authors and illustrators of the 20th Century....

. Keats received the 1963 Caldecott Medal

Caldecott Medal

The Caldecott Medal is awarded annually by the Association for Library Service to Children , a division of the American Library Association, to the artist of the most distinguished American picture book for children published that year. The award was named in honor of nineteenth-century English...

 for his illustrations in the book. It features a boy named Peter exploring his neighborhood after the first snowfall of the season.

Development

The inspiration for Peter came from a Life magazine

Life (magazine)

Life generally refers to three American magazines:*A humor and general interest magazine published from 1883 to 1936. Time founder Henry Luce bought the magazine in 1936 solely so that he could acquire the rights to its name....

 photo article from 1940, and Keats' desire to have minority children of New York as central characters in his stories. Peter appears in six more books growing from a small boy in The Snowy Day to pre-adolescence in A Letter to Amy

A Letter to Amy

A Letter to Amy is a 1968 children's picture book by American author and illustrator Ezra Jack Keats."Peter, from Keats' The Snowy Day, is having a birthday party, and he's asked all of his friends to come. But Amy is a special friend because she is a girl--so Peter decides to write her a special...

.

External Links

• The Snowy Day and the Art of Ezra Jack Keats Exhibition at The Jewish Museum (New York)
  Jewish Museum (New York)
  The Jewish Museum of New York, an art museum and repository of cultural artifacts, is the leading Jewish museum in the United States. With over 26,000 objects, it contains the largest collection of art and Jewish culture outside of museums in Israel. The museum is housed at 1109 Fifth Avenue, in...