The Snowy Day Resources

The Ezra Jack Keats Foundation's mission is to bring "the multicultural, creative spirit of Keats into children's lives and literature. Find out how they do it here.

Check out the NYPL's Books of the Century List, where you'll see The Snowy Day listed in the Favorites of Childhood & Youth section along with such classics as The Tales of Peter Rabbit and The Catcher in the Rye.

Scholastic's Ezra Jack Keats page offers a brief bio of the artist and highlights many of the books written and/or illustrated by Keats.

Check out this live action version of The Snowy Day. It has everything from the stick and the melting snowball to the snow coming down—plop!—on top of this tiny actor's head.

Find out why young filmmaker Caelan Barr, at age 11, was compelled to make his live action version of The Snowy Day.

This 2017 Amazon original is a holiday special based on The Snowy Day.It features Regina King voicing Peter's mother and the narration is by none other than Laurence Fishburne. (34 minutes)

Cast, crew, writers—get all the deets on the Amazon original movie here, including the fact that the soundtrack is performed by Boyz II Men.

Read the acceptance speech Ezra Jack Keats gave when he won the Caldecott Award and learn about how he created the book, right down to how he found the various papers he used for his collage-style illustrations.

A comprehensive biography of EJK from the Ezra Jack Keats Foundation.

While The Snowy Day was the first mainstream U.S. picture book to feature an African-American child as its hero, writer Yvonne Zipp notes that Keats didn't choose to feature an African American character to make a point. Instead Keats said, "My book would have him there simply because he should have been there all along."

The Chicago Tribune's article on the 50th anniversary of The Snowy Day focuses on the unexpected effects of Keats's book, noting that Peter's "[…] skin color plays no role in the plot but was nonetheless noteworthy—and, for some, life changing."

The Horn Book discusses the enduring impact of The Snowy Day, placing its publication in historical context by including excerpts from several contemporary reviews and criticisms of the time.

Maria Russo of the New York Times Book Review offers her thoughts on the forever stamps issued in 2017 with illustrations from Keats's snowy book.

This read aloud is not only animated with illustrations from the book—it features beatboxing! Probably one of the coolest read aloud videos ever.

In his National Book Award acceptance speech, Sherman Alexie gave a shout out to Ezra Jack Keats, citing The Snowy Day as the first book he ever loved. (Alexie's speech starts around the five-minute mark.)

In this brief, one-minute feature on YouTube, Keats shows some of his artwork and talks about the individual pieces.

Deborah Pope, the executive director of the Ezra Jack Keats Foundation, explains to NPR host Guy Raz how Keats's book about a young boy and Peter helped to advance African Americans during the Civil Rights movement…even though Keats wasn't writing a "cause book."

In October of 2017, the United States Post Office issued a forever stamp with pictures from the famous Ezra Jack Keats book, The Snowy Day. Hear all about it here.

Andrea Davis Pinkney's book about Keats and the writing of The Snowy Day reveals facts about how the character Peter came to be, what name Ezra Jack Keats was given at birth, and just how important this book was for Pinkney. Spoiler alert: she loved it so much she slept with a copy of it as a kid.

Enjoy listening to the title track from the Amazon original animated holiday special based on the Ezra Jack Keats book…performed by none other than Boyz II Men.

This series of four photos shows a young boy circa 1940 getting ready to have a blood test in Georgia. The boy became the inspiration for Peter, the protagonist of The Snowy Day and other books by Keats.

A great photo of Ezra Jack Keats in his studio, from Britannica.

Here's the iconic cover that has stood the test of time.

In 2016 a library/innovation center in New Castle, Delaware used funds from the Ezra Jack Keats Foundation to construct this version of The Snowy Day cover from LEGOs to help celebrate its grand opening.