Where It All Goes Down
The snow that brightens nearly every page of the book is a dead giveaway that this story takes place in the winter. And the presence of big buildings (10-11, 12-13, 14-15, 24), traffic lights (cover, 15), and at least one apartment complex (35) lets us know that we're in an urban setting.
And this particular setting is significant. Why? Because The Snowy Day was "one of the first picture books for young children to portray a realistic, multicultural urban setting" (source).
It turns out all of those cut-paper collages of brightly colored buildings and snowbanks piled high next to streetlights are a lot more than just pretty pictures. They help to create a setting that was in many ways as groundbreaking as the book's main character.