The Snowy Day and the Art of Jack Ezra Keats
November 15, 2012–February 24, 2013
Complete Wall Text
INTRODUCTION
The Snowy Day and the Art of Ezra Jack Keats
The beloved characters who populate the children’s books of Ezra Jack Keats—Archie,
Amy, and Louie among them—have earned generations of adoring fans, and Peter, the
African American protagonist of his landmark book The Snowy Day (1962), has become
almost an icon. With the little boy in the red hood, Keats paved the way for multiracial
representation in American children’s literature. The dilapidated urban settings of his stories
are also pioneering—picture books had rarely featured these gritty landscapes before.
The author and illustrator was born Jacob Ezra Katz in Brooklyn in 1916. His parents were
Eastern European Jewish immigrants and very poor. Primarily self-taught as an artist, he
drew upon memories of growing up in East New York, one of the most deprived
neighborhoods in the city. Yet his work transcends the personal and reflects the universal
concerns of children.
Inspired by Asian art and haiku poetry, Keats used lush color in his paintings and collages
and strove for simplicity in his texts. He was often more intent on capturing a mood than on
developing a plot. “Each drawing is considered not in itself, but in relationship to the rest
of the book,” he explained, while keeping in mind “drama, continuity, contrast, and
mood.” His preferred format was the horizontal double-page spread, which freed him to
alternate close-up scenes with panoramic views. By the end of his life in 1983, he had
illustrated over eighty books, most of them for children, twenty-two of which he also
authored.
Keats’s experience of anti-Semitism and poverty in his youth gave him a lifelong sympathy
for others who suffered prejudice and want. “If we all could really see (‘see’ as perceive,
understand, discover) each other exactly as the other is,” he once remarked, “this would be
a different world.” A visit to Keats’s neighborhood is restorative: Peter and his friends
remind us of the simple joy of being alive.
Claudia J. Nahson, Curator
The Jewish Museum, New York
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The Snowy Day and the Art of Jack Ezra Keats
November 15, 2012–February 24, 2013
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[1]
Dust jacket
Final illustration for Penny Tunes and Princesses, by Myron Levoy, 1972
Paint and collage on board
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
Keats appears in some of his illustrations. Here he casts himself as János, the poor
immigrant violinist at the center of Penny Tunes and Princesses. János, like Keats, struggles but
eventually overcomes life’s difficulties through his art.
[2]
“The man looked around, surprised”
Final illustration for Louie’s Search, 1980
Paint and collage on board
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
In Louie’s Search, Keats is the model for Barney the junkman.
[3]
“He didn’t find a mud turtle, but he found an old picture”
Final illustration for Zoo, Where Are You? by Ann McGovern, 1964
Collage on canvas
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
In this whimsical collage, Keats includes a photograph of himself, sporting a fake moustache
and posing with the author and her son, Peter.
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The Snowy Day and the Art of Jack Ezra Keats
November 15, 2012–February 24, 2013
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APT. 3 & DREAMS
[PANEL TEXT]
Coming of Age in Brooklyn
Ezra Jack Keats’s impoverished childhood was permeated with the flavors of the Old
Country. His memoirs are filled with recollections of a devout but thunderous neighborhood
tzadik (“righteous man”), of listening to sentimental Yiddish songs, and of falling asleep to
the sound of his father reading aloud from the “Bintel Brief,” a column in the Jewish Daily
Forward newspaper that dispensed advice to immigrants.
When young Jack first showed artistic talent by doodling on the kitchen tabletop, his mother
covered the drawings with the Sabbath tablecloth, proudly unveiling them for visiting
neighbors. Benjamin Katz’s attitude toward his son’s artistic inclination was not as warm.
While he often brought the boy cheap paints and brushes, he also discouraged him by
pretending that he had obtained the supplies from starving artists in exchange for food at the
Greenwich Village diner where he worked. The ploy did not work: Keats’s appreciation for
beauty within the ordinary developed early, and art afforded him an escape from the harsh
circumstances of life at home.
Most of the art showcased in this section was created by Keats late in his career, for it is only
in these later works that he directly confronts his early life. In Goggles!, published in 1969, he
revisits the traumatic recollection of being bullied as a child. He then mines his memories of
tenement life in Apt. 3 (1971) and Dreams (1973) before delving into his deepest inner
feelings and fears in a series of books featuring an introverted protagonist named Louie, a
self-portrait of sorts. To convey the dramatic nuances of these autobiographical forays, he
relies heavily on painting, his medium of choice in his early days as a budding artist.
Jack Katz, c. 1921
Photographic reproduction
Courtesy of the Ezra Jack Keats Foundation
As a child, Keats lived with his family in a railroad flat on Vermont Street in the East New
York section of Brooklyn. Later, as their financial situation worsened, they moved to a
tenement in the same neighborhood.
[4]
Untitled (Rooftop in Brooklyn), c. 1934–36
Oil on canvas board
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
Rooftops are a frequent theme in Keats’s earliest paintings. “The roof was a refuge where
one could go to get a feeling of spaciousness, to see the full expanse of the sky, to feel free
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The Snowy Day and the Art of Jack Ezra Keats
November 15, 2012–February 24, 2013
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as a bird,” writes his lifelong friend Martin Pope, recalling the crowded conditions of
tenement life in Depression-era New York.
[5]
Untitled (Candy Shop at Night), c. 1934–36
Oil on canvas board
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
As a teenager, Keats captured his neighborhood in scenes such as this one, reminiscent of
Edward Hopper’s paintings of urban alienation, which he admired and sometimes copied.
[6]
Bedford Street, c. 1950
Gouache on board
Private Collection
In the early 1950s Keats was facing a particularly dark period in his life, struggling to make a
living as an artist. He had originally conceived this work as a desolate scene, without figures,
but his friend Martin Pope pointed out the need for some human presence.
[SUBSECTION PANEL TEXT]
Outsmarting the Bullies: Goggles!
A Caldecott Medal runner-up, Goggles! (1969) is Keats’s first truly autobiographical book. The
story is set on a fictionalized street, one block from where the young Keats lived, but
considered dangerous territory. Keats was small and artistic, and was often the target of
bullies. But one day, when he was about twelve, things changed for the better. He was on his
way to show a picture he had made to a friend when he was confronted by older boys. One
ripped the painting from his hands, examined it, and exclaimed “Geez!” admiringly. He gave
it back to Jack with a cheerful “So long, Doc!”
In Goggles!, Peter, his dog Willie, and his friend Archie must outwit a gang of bullies in order
to keep the discarded motorcycle goggles they have found. The book is, in Keats’s words, a
story of “triumph of brains over brawn,” revisiting his own early, empowering realization
that his talent for art could help him navigate the perils of the inner city and rise above its
limitations.
[7]
“ ‘Archie, look what I found,’ Peter shouted through the pipe”
Final illustrations for Goggles!, 1969
Paint and collage on board
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
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The Snowy Day and the Art of Jack Ezra Keats
November 15, 2012–February 24, 2013
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[8]
“Peter ran to the hideout and put on the goggles” (top, center)
Final illustrations for Goggles!, 1969
Paint and collage on board
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
A reviewer wrote: “One has to see the glowing brilliance and flow of action on these pages
to realize how a great artist can use color and perspective and ground-level views to create
suspense and realism.”
[9]
“The next thing he knew he was knocked to the ground” (top, far left)
Final illustrations for Goggles!, 1969
Paint and collage on board
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
[10]
“There were the big boys—and there was Willie”
Final illustrations for Goggles!, 1969
Paint and collage on board
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
[11]
“Peter, Archie and Willie crept out of the hideout”
Final illustrations for Goggles!, 1969
Paint and collage on board
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
[12]
“Archie laughed and said, ‘We sure fooled ’em, didn’t we?’”
Final illustrations for Goggles!, 1969
Paint and collage on board
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
After Peter’s dog Willie snatches the goggles and escapes the big boys, Peter and Archie seek
refuge in their hideout. At far left they assess the situation before creeping out of their
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The Snowy Day and the Art of Jack Ezra Keats
November 15, 2012–February 24, 2013
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shelter in the illustration at center—a glorious scene in which they flee for home, no bullies
in sight.
[SUBSECTION PANEL TEXT]
Looking Back at Tenement Life: Apt. 3 and Dreams
Keats considered the 1971 book Apt. 3 “closest to me in my own personal experience” and
“one of the most important things I have done.” The story conflates two vivid childhood
memories: music floating up from his tenement’s courtyard and an encounter in which he
was moved by a blind man’s deep awareness of the world. Sam and Ben go on a quest to
find the source of the haunting music they hear rising above the noises from other dwellings,
the “loud, juicy snoring,” the cries of a baby, and the domestic quarrels. The sound is a blind
man’s harmonica. The illustrations are the artist’s bleakest and most painterly but music
magically brings color into the oppressive interiors.
In Dreams (1974), color flows out of the windows of a Brooklyn apartment building on a hot
summer night. As the inhabitants begin to dream, whatever has darkened their days is
dispelled and color suffuses their world. Both books are mood pieces in which the plot is
merely a vehicle to convey the tenement’s transformation.
[13]
Untitled (Tenement Courtyard), c. 1929
Pastel on paper
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
“When I was a kid one hot summer night I couldn’t sleep,” Keats recalled many years later.
“I was sitting at the kitchen window which faced onto an alley. . . . There was a circle of
tenements and a center court where people would sing and we’d throw pennies. . . .
Suddenly there was the most beautiful music! . . . I wondered where the music had come
from.” Jack Katz, then thirteen years old, evoked that magical night in this pastel. This work
and the experience that inspired it later became the genesis for Apt. 3. Keats eventually
identified the music that he had heard that night as Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture.
[14]
Storyboard for Apt. 3, 1971
Paint and pencil on paper
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
Keats wrote several drafts of the text for Apt. 3 and created a number of preliminary
drawings (see the dummy book on view in the case nearby).
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The Snowy Day and the Art of Jack Ezra Keats
November 15, 2012–February 24, 2013
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[15]
“Out came Mr. Muntz, crunching a mouthful of potato chips”
Final illustration for Apt. 3, 1971
Paint on board
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
As they search for the source of the music, Sam and his younger brother, Ben, run into a
neighbor named Mr. Muntz, a big and menacing figure. The scene’s exaggerated perspective
emphasizes the oppressiveness of tenement life.
[16]
“He went over to take a good look”
Final illustration for Apt. 3, 1971
Paint on board
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
In this scene Sam and Ben finally locate the music’s source in apartment 3.
[17]
“He stood up suddenly, raised his harmonica to his mouth, and began to play”
Final illustration for Apt. 3, 1971
Paint on board
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
After Sam and Ben hesitantly enter his flat, the blind man enchants them with his music:
“You want to hear some secrets? Listen.” The reader shares the exhilarating experience of
the two boys. The artist builds up to this brilliant ending by using mostly dull colors
throughout and then shifting from somber browns to glorious purples, a transformation
echoed in the ebullient, poetic text: “He played purples and grays and rain and smoke and
the sounds of the night. Sam . . . felt that all the sights and sounds and colors from outside
had come into the room and were floating around.”
[25]
“It was hot. After supper Roberto came to his window to talk with Amy”
Final illustration for Dreams, 1974
Marbled paper and paint on board
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
In a luminous summer sunset, Roberto, the protagonist of Dreams, comes to his tenement
window to cool off and show his friend and neighbor Amy the paper mouse he has made in
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The Snowy Day and the Art of Jack Ezra Keats
November 15, 2012–February 24, 2013
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school. Keats often reminisced about the hot evenings of his Brooklyn childhood, when all
the tenements “would merge and blend into the sky, and the sun would be setting . . . and
there’d be the purple haze over everything and everything would be transformed.”
[26]
“Soon everybody was dreaming—except one person”
Final illustration for Dreams, 1974
Marbled paper and paint on board
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
[27]
“His pajama sleeve brushed the paper mouse off the windowsill”
Final illustration for Dreams, 1974
Paint and collage on board
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
[28]
“The shadow grew bigger—and bigger—And BIGGER! The dog howled and ran away”
Final illustration for Dreams, 1974
Paint on board
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
Shadows appear often in Keats’s art and the importance of the frequent interplay between
the real and the perceived in his illustrations cannot be overstated. In this work, for example,
in a David-and-Goliath subplot, a gigantic shadow cast by Roberto’s tiny paper mouse saves
his friend Archie’s cat when it is threatened by a vicious dog.
EPHEMERA CASE: APT. 3 & DREAMS
[18]
Dummy book for Apt. 3, 1971
Pencil on paper
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
This early dummy or mock-up book is particularly significant. Featuring Keats’s only known
draft for a book in the first person, it confirms the artist’s claim that Apt. 3 was the most
personal book he had ever created. Ultimately, he decided to tell the story in the third
person, through Sam, which afforded him some distance from the heavy autobiographical
content.
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The Snowy Day and the Art of Jack Ezra Keats
November 15, 2012–February 24, 2013
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[19]
Letter from Keats to Isaac Bashevis Singer, c. September 1971
Undated carbon copy
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
Keats was especially fond of Apt. 3 and considered it one of his most important books. He
suggests as much in this letter to his friend the author Isaac Bashevis Singer, sent soon after
the book was published.
[20]
Letter to Keats from Isaac Bashevis Singer, October 26, 1971
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
[21 and 22]
Research materials for Apt. 3
Photograph; print on paper
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
To render the tenements of his childhood accurately, Keats took photographs of old
buildings in New York and consulted historical images, such as this interior of a room from
about 1910.
[23]
Storyboard for Dreams, 1974
Ink on paper
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
From the outset Keats thought like a painter, with images often emerging before words. He
described the creative process as akin to “seeing a silent movie with my own words coming
through,” and spoke of “choreographing” his illustrations.
[24]
Sketchbook for Dreams, 1974
Pen and pencil on paper
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
This sketchbook includes an annotated storyboard for Dreams, as well as Keats’s numerous
reworkings of the text.
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The Snowy Day and the Art of Jack Ezra Keats
November 15, 2012–February 24, 2013
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LOUIE’S SEARCH
[PANEL TEXT]
A Portrait of the Artist: Louie, The Trip, Louie’s Search, and Regards to the Man in
the Moon
Louie, the protagonist of four picture books, wrestles with feelings of isolation and
invisibility—the same difficulties that had hindered Keats’s early emotional and artistic
growth. The first book in the series, Louie (1975), is the story of a lonely boy who is
captivated by a puppet named Gussie. The autobiographical connections are clear: Gussie
was the nickname of Keats’s mother, Augusta Katz, with whom he had a troubled
relationship. She was not a loving woman, although she supported his talent.
“The only time anyone knew that I was around was when I drew pictures,” Keats said of his
early years. Louie similarly finds an outlet in art making. In The Trip (1978), after moving to a
new neighborhood where he knows “no kids, no dogs, and no cats,” and where there aren’t
even “any steps in front of the door to sit on,” the boy builds a peep box that allows him to
take an imaginary journey back to his old block.
At the opening of Louie’s Search (1980), the withdrawn and fatherless protagonist takes
matters into his own hands. “Maybe someone would notice him—someone he’d like for a
father.” His search leads him to Barney, a larger-than-life junkman based on a character from
Keats’s childhood, a tempestuous religious Jew known as Tzadik. Barney and Louie’s mother
fall in love, and the boy gets the second parent he has longed for. In Regards to the Man in the
Moon (1981), Louie’s new stepfather is a moving tribute to Tzadik, whose piety and
conviction inspired young Keats to pursue his own passion for art.
Louie’s passage from emotional rags to riches enables the artist to vicariously “correct” his
own childhood, providing his character with the stable home Jack Katz never had.
[29]
Storyboard for Louie, 1975
Paint and pencil on board
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
In this, the second of four storyboards with a preliminary graphic outline for Louie, a ratty
puppet called the Hobo first prompts the shy protagonist to break his silence. Here Keats
has yet to establish an autobiographical connection between the tale and his own early life;
later he renamed the puppet after his mother. Art offered him rare moments of bonding
with her: “We both could create things together, and take off—take flight, be in different
places, see a blank board or a blank canvas or burlap . . . come to life,” he wrote.
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The Snowy Day and the Art of Jack Ezra Keats
November 15, 2012–February 24, 2013
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[30]
“Then he walked home”
Final illustration for Louie, 1975
Collage and paint on board
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
Growing up, Keats took long walks “as far away from home as possible” to flee domestic
unhappiness. No image better communicates the emotional burden the boy must have borne
than this scene in which a solitary Louie, hunched over and with hands in pockets, walks
past a wall exploding with graffiti—a collage tour de force.
[31]
“He turned around and ran—as fast as he could”
Final illustration for The Trip, 1978
Collage, paint, crayon, and pencil on board
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
In The Trip, Louie’s old, familiar neighborhood turns threatening, with overpowering
shadows, when the protagonist revisits it with the help of a shoe-box diorama he has
fashioned. The Trip was later adapted for the theater with music and lyrics by Stephen
Schwartz of Wicked fame, and the artist’s illustrations were used as the basis for sets and
costumes. The musical, which opened in December 1983, a few months after Keats’s death,
was later expanded and continues to be performed, under the title Captain Louie.
[32]
“It was time to go home”
Final illustration for The Trip, 1978
Collage, paint, and crayon on board
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
The shadows, at first so frightening to Louie, turn out to be his old friends, dressed up for
Halloween. The gang’s magical flight in Louie’s makeshift airplane has come to an end and it
is time for Louie to say goodbye to Archie, Roberto, and Amy. His old friends’ joyful cries
of “Trick or Treat!” help Louie make the transition to his new neighborhood just in time to
get into his costume and join his new friends in the holiday’s merrymaking.
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EPHEMERA CASE: LOUIE’S SEARCH
[41]
Storyboard for The Trip, 1978
Pencil, crayon, and ink on paper
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
[42]
Dummy book for Louie’s Search, 1980
Pencil on paper
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
This scene in which Barney chases Louie is probably based on an episode from Keats’s
childhood. One day, while he was playing with other children on the sidewalk, the doors of a
nearby cellar suddenly swung open. Up came Tzadik, bellowing in Yiddish, “Bums! Can’t a
man pray in peace in his own home?” Catching up with Jack, he lifted him in the air and
said: “Look up—look up—see? God is there! He’s watching us all! He wants us to lead
fruitful lives and do good acts. We weren’t put on this earth to be loafers. Remember! Serve
the Lord!” He then set him down and dismissed him with a blessing: “God watch over you,
little herring.”
[43]
Notes for Louie’s Search, 1980
Ink on paper
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
[44]
Text draft for Louie’s Search, 1980
Ink on paper
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
[45]
Dummy book for Regards to the Man in the Moon, 1981
Pencil on paper
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
[33a]
Child posing as Louie
Research photograph for Louie’s Search, 1980
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The Snowy Day and the Art of Jack Ezra Keats
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Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
[33b]
Photograph by Helen Levitt
From A Way of Seeing, 1965, by Helen Levitt and James Agee
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
This reproduction of a work by Helen Levitt (1913–2009), a major practitioner of New York
street photography, was found among Keats’s miscellaneous research materials. The image
of a boy standing at the doorway, sporting a paper hat, inspired Keats’s depiction of Louie in
the opening scene of Louie’s Search.
[34a–c]
Keats poses as Barney
Research photographs for Louie’s Search, 1980
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
One of the artist’s seminal childhood experiences was his encounter with Tzadik, a local
ragman who led a reclusive and humble existence, eking out a living hauling “big sacks of
coal, or enormous hunks of ice on his back. Even pianos.” Tzadik exhorted the boy to lead
an observant Jewish life filled with purpose, inspiring him to follow his dream of becoming
an artist. Barney the junkman in Louie’s Search was modeled on Tzadik, as well as being a selfportrait.
[35]
“ ‘What kind of neighborhood is this?’ thought Louie”
Final illustration for Louie’s Search, 1980
Paint and collage on board
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
[36]
“Louie passed quite a few people”
Final illustration for Louie’s Search, 1980
Paint and collage on board
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
At the story’s beginning the artist depicts Louie as a shadow, a nonpresence in his own
neighborhood, which is otherwise bustling with life. Keats wrote of feeling invisible as a
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child, of “walking around like a shadow.” Remembering the kindness shown him by a friend
of his older brother, the artist described his perplexity at being addressed as a real presence
in the world: “I was surprised that he perceived, that he saw me, that I occupied space.” The
young man was called Louie, and the character’s name is probably a tribute to him.
[37]
“The man in the truck turned around. He looked terrible!”
Final illustration for Louie’s Search, 1980
Paint and collage on board
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
In this scene we are introduced to Barney the ragman, from whose truck a music box has
fallen. As Louie picks it up and is about to put it back on the truck, the music box, which
Barney thought was broken, begins to play. The junkman accuses the boy of stealing it and
runs after him, eventually catching up with Louie near the house where he lives with his
mother, Peg.
[38]
“They went into his house. ‘Louie, what happened?’ his mother gasped”
Final illustration for Louie’s Search, 1980
Collage and paint on board
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
Louie’s mother, Peg, persuades Barney that her son never meant to steal from him. Believing
that the boy’s appreciation for the music box has made it play again, the junkman lets him
keep it. Keats probably modeled Peg after his own mother, seen here.
[39]
“ ‘Junk?’ Barney growled. ‘They should know better than to call this junk.’ ”
Final illustration for Regards to the Man in the Moon, 1981
Collage and paint on board
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
At the beginning of Regards to the Man in the Moon, the last book of the Louie series, the
protagonist is derided for having a junkman as a parent. Barney responds forcefully: “They
should know better than to call this junk. All a person needs is some imagination! And a little
of that stuff can take you right out of this world.” Immediately they set to work on
Imagination I, a make-believe space capsule that will send Louie and his friend Susie on a
fantastic trip to the stars.
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[40]
“They were getting close to home when Ziggie finally dropped the rope”
Final illustration for Regards to the Man in the Moon, 1981
Collage and paint on marbled paper, mounted on board
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
Louie and Susie’s return voyage in their makeshift spacecraft offers a dramatic view of lower
Manhattan with the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. This incandescent image of
the New York skyline is today a moving tribute to the destroyed buildings.
BRINGING THE BACKGROUND TO THE FOREGROUND
[PANEL TEXT]
Bringing the Background to the Foreground
In the 1940s, Keats had a job inking in the backgrounds for comic books. He saw this
experience as a metaphor for his outsider childhood: “I thought I was great as a background
man. I’d been in the background for a long time, and figured I might as well earn some
money at it.” Throughout his life, he identified with the downtrodden.
He admired the nineteenth-century French artist Honoré Daumier, especially his images of
the disenfranchised. His influence on Keats is reflected in Shantytown, an early painting of
unemployed men during the Depression. Keats’s art was always socially engaged: in the late
1930s, he worked as an assistant mural painter for the Works Progress Administration
(WPA) and later documented the end of the coal-mining era in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
After serving in World War II, Jack Ezra Katz changed his name to Ezra Jack Keats,
probably in response to pervasive anti-Semitism. He briefly studied painting in Paris on the
GI Bill—a rare opportunity for the primarily self-taught artist—and by the early 1950s he
was working as an illustrator for Reader’s Digest, The New York Times Book Review, Collier’s, and
other publications. “I didn’t even ask to get into children’s books,” he recalled, but when a
book cover he had designed caught the eye of an editor, commissions started to pour in.
He began to have success as an illustrator of other authors’ books and soon observed that
none of these showcased an African American child as the main character. In fact, if black
children were present at all, they were often rendered in racist stereotypes, as may be seen in
some of the early picture books on view in the case in this gallery. Nor were other minorities
much represented, prompting Keats to write his first book, My Dog Is Lost! (1960,
coauthored with Pat Cherr), featuring Juanito, a Puerto Rican boy. This groundbreaking
multicultural story led Keats to his next creation, The Snowy Day (1962).
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[46]
Untitled (Portrait of a Boy), late 1930s
Ink and graphite on paper
Private Collection
Though Keats made many sketches and studies of children of color prior to his creation of
Peter, the protagonist of The Snowy Day (1962), this is the only one known to have survived.
[47]
Shantytown, c. 1934
Oil on canvas
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
“Hope was a theory, the reality was pain and when I painted . . . [the] unemployed, they were
fused together. It was hard to separate them,” wrote Keats, recalling the grim years of the
Great Depression. His rendering of homeless men huddling around a fire, painted when he
was seventeen, won first prize in the 1934 National Scholastic competition and was
exhibited around the country in a traveling exhibition.
[48]
Untitled (Portrait of a Miner, Scranton, Pennsylvania), c. 1950
Oil on board
Private Collection
[49]
“Juanito bent his legs to show how his dog ran (patizambo!)”
Page from dummy book for My Dog Is Lost!, 1960
Watercolor, pencil, and crayon on paper
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
In My Dog Is Lost!, Juanito, just arrived in New York from Puerto Rico and unable to speak
English, enlists the help of new friends as he wanders the city’s neighborhoods in search of
his missing canine companion. Juanito was probably inspired by Freddy, a boy Keats met in
the early 1950s and later mentioned in his memoirs: “a Puerto Rican nine year old who
entered and left our place like a member of the family and about whom some day I would do
a book.”
[50]
“He’s found!”
Page from dummy book for My Dog Is Lost!, 1960
Watercolor, pencil, and crayon on paper
16
The Snowy Day and the Art of Jack Ezra Keats
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Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
In this charming final scene, Juanito and his dog, now found, happily trail behind a
multiethnic parade of new friends. Though the heavily multicultural nature of the book
borders on artificial, it was a pioneering effort by Keats and his coauthor, Pat Cherr, at a
time when picture books featuring minority children were rare.
EPHEMERA CASE: FROM SAMBO TO STEVIE
[SUBSECTION PANEL]
From Sambo to Stevie: African Americans in Picture Books
The history of African American representation in modern picture books is characterized
largely by absence. When a book did feature African Americans, they were nearly always
racist caricatures, as in the highly popular Little Black Sambo and Nicodemus stories.
Nevertheless, Ezra Jack Keats’s achievement in The Snowy Day is not without precedents.
The 1920s saw a boom in cultural and intellectual empowerment in the African American
community, known at the time as the New Negro Movement and commonly referred to
today as the Harlem Renaissance, after the movement’s epicenter in New York. A handful of
influential black authors, such as Arna Bontemps and Langston Hughes, worked to
counteract the prejudices ingrained in youth literature and to promote self-worth in African
American children through such publications as The Brownies’ Book. But in an industry
dominated by white authors and controlled by white editors and publishers, these efforts
rarely received wide distribution—the degrading stereotypes persisted in mainstream
children’s literature throughout the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s.
[51]
Little Black Sambo, by Helen Bannerman, 1899 (this edition probably 1951)
Private Collection
Little Black Sambo is the first children’s book in English with a black child as protagonist. It is
the story of a boy whose parents give him new clothes, which he forfeits to a group of tigers
so that they won’t eat him. Sambo himself actually has personality and wit, but the book is
shaped by British colonialist prejudice: the names Mumbo (Sambo’s mother) and Jumbo (his
father) are clearly meant for ridicule, and Sambo’s name may derive from the Spanish and
Portuguese zambo, bow-legged. Despite the Indian setting, Bannerman’s amateurish
illustrations draw on negative imagery of African Americans—Mumbo in particular appears
as a plantation “mammy” stereotype of the black domestic worker.
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[52]
Little Black Sambo, by Helen Bannerman, illustrated by Florence White Williams, 1932 edition
Helen Bannerman’s early loss of the US copyright to Little Black Sambo allowed numerous
other artists to produce their own illustrated editions, often depicting Sambo and his family
in racist caricatures, with the bug eyes and thick red lips typical of minstrel imagery. The
book’s success rapidly popularized the name Sambo as a generic derogatory term for any
black man or boy.
[53]
Nicodemus and the Houn’ Dog, by Inez Hogan, 1933 (1953 edition)
de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and Archives, The
University of Southern Mississippi
For many decades, if a black child was not represented as a “Sambo” in popular culture, he
or she was a “pickaninny,” originally a mocking term for slave children in the antebellum
South. The stereotype conveyed the idea that rural African American children were naïve,
ignorant, laughably gullible, and abjectly poor. Inez Hogan’s very popular Nicodemus series
exemplifies this racist portrayal: Nicodemus is clumsy, lazy, and dimwitted, and has
caricatured physical features, shabby clothes, and bare feet. Hogan wrote twelve Nicodemus
books in the 1930s and 1940s. Many of them went through several printings well into the
1950s, including the edition on view.
[54]
Cover of The Brownies’ Book, February 1920
Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black
Culture, New York Public Library
In 1920 the author W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963), a leader of the Harlem Renaissance and
of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), launched
The Brownies’ Book, a monthly children’s magazine. It featured pictures, poems, and fiction
and nonfiction stories intent on making “colored children realize that being ‘colored’ is a
normal, beautiful thing,” as Du Bois wrote. Although it was published for only two years, it
had considerable influence and can be credited with offering the first thoroughly uplifting
images of black children in American juvenile literature. The first issue bore an inspiring
dedication by the coeditor, Jessie Fauset: “To Children, who with eager look / Scanned
vainly library shelf and nook / For History or Song or Story / That told of Colored Peoples
glory / We dedicate The Brownies’ Book.”
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[55]
The Dream Keeper and Other Poems, by Langston Hughes, illustrated by Helen Sewell, 1932
The Dream Keeper, by the eminent Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes (1902–1967), is
a landmark: one of the first poetry collections intended specifically for black children
produced by a major publishing house, Alfred A. Knopf. The illustrator chosen for the
project, Helen Sewell, was white, and Hughes was very concerned that her images of black
children be truthful and positive. He was deeply committed to improving African American
children’s literature, and had begun contributing his own poems to The Brownies’ Book when
he was just eighteen years old; “April Rain Song,” shown here, is one such poem.
[SUBSECTION PANEL]
From Sambo to Stevie: African Americans in Picture Books
After World War II, with the rise of the civil rights movement and as desegregation took
hold, interest grew in integrated children’s books. More African American authors were
published, characters of color emerged, and plotlines promoted racial understanding. Still,
most juvenile literature that addressed race was for older readers, as the theme was not
deemed appropriate for picture books. The majority of integrationist books, such as Fun for
Chris, were still authored by white writers for a white audience: people of color were usually
secondary characters whose role was to conform to and seek acceptance in a white culture.
It was not until the late 1960s that African American children’s literature truly took flight. As
the racial empowerment movement progressed, black authors and illustrators such as John
Steptoe renewed the ambitions of the Harlem Renaissance authors, writing about black
heritage, culture, and identity for a growing African American audience. Throughout the
1970s and 1980s children of color could increasingly see realistic and positive reflections of
themselves in picture books. Even so, today fewer than 10 percent of children’s books have
significant African American content.
[56]
My Dog Rinty, by Ellen Tarry and Marie Hall Ets, illustrated by Alexander and Alexandra
Alland, 1946 (1966 edition)
Ellen Tarry (1906–2008) was one of the few black authors of the 1940s to dedicate her
literary career exclusively to children. For this book, Tarry was approached by her white
coauthor Marie Hall Ets, who had been struck by the lack of books on urban black life.
Viking Press insisted that it be illustrated with black-and-white photographs—a device that
enabled the publisher to avoid the distorted and racist imagery common in artists’ pictures.
The photographs have a documentary and rather idealized quality, so that the book
transcends the plot of David and his dog Rinty to consciously promote the image and values
of middle-class Harlem for a mixed-race readership.
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The Snowy Day and the Art of Jack Ezra Keats
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[57]
Fun for Chris, by Blossom E. Randall, illustrated by Eunice Young Smith, 1956
Overwhelmingly, race was addressed in juvenile literature for older readers. One of the few
integrationist picture books for the young was Fun for Chris by the white author Blossom E.
Randall. The white title character, Chris, befriends Toby, a slightly older black child. But
Toby is not presented as a realistic individual: his features are clearly modeled on a white
ideal, and his purpose is to allow Chris—and the white reader—to learn about race and
tolerance. Although Fun for Chris was well received by critics, it did not sell well because
many parents disapproved of the interracial content.
[58]
Stevie, by John Steptoe, 1969
The African American author and artist John Steptoe (1950–1989) started to work on Stevie
when he was just sixteen years old, and it was published three years later. Set in the inner
city, the book is about the relationship of Robert, the narrator, and Stevie, whom Robert
cares for while the younger boy’s mother works. Steptoe’s book is notable for its richly
colored and textured illustrations and realistic dialogue. Told in a visual and linguistic style
that reflects contemporary black urban culture, Stevie is often cited as one of the first modern
African American children’s books.
[59]
Cornrows, by Camille Yarbrough, illustrated by Carole Byard, 1979
Cornrows is about an elderly woman who braids the hair of her great-grandchildren while
telling them the history and symbolism of the hairstyle. The book draws on important
African American themes, such as storytelling traditions, strong cross-generational family
ties, and an embrace of African roots. Byard’s evocative monochrome illustrations
emphasize the beauty and humanity of the contemporary black characters and their
ancestors. In 1980 Cornrows won the Coretta Scott King Award, established in 1970 to honor
African American authors and illustrators for outstanding contributions to multicultural and
ethnic literature.
[60]
Sam and the Tigers, by Julius Lester, illustrated by Jerry Pinkney, 1996
The writer and activist Julius Lester (b. 1939) has reclaimed a few classics of children’s
literature that have been tainted by racism. Lester offers a witty retelling of Little Black Sambo
in which the streetwise title character is neither a caricature nor the object of condescending
white amusement. He lives in the whimsical land of Sam-sam-sa-mara, where everyone is
named Sam (including his parents), adding a humorous twist to the dialogue. Stunning
illustrations by Jerry Pinkney (b. 1939) complement the updated text. Together, Lester and
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Complete Wall Text
Pinkney recover the protagonist’s heroism from the years of racism that had undermined
him.
THE SNOWY DAY
[PANEL TEXT]
The Snowy Day
Published at the height of the American civil rights movement and winner of the prestigious
Caldecott Medal, The Snowy Day (1962) was the first book Keats both illustrated and solely
authored. Inspired by memories of snowy days in his childhood, when Brooklyn would turn
“very quiet, very poetic and so different that I felt it in my bones,” the gentle tale of Peter’s
wonderment at his first snowfall became a milestone, featuring the first African American
protagonist in a full-color picture book. For the illustrations Keats had planned to use
patterned paper as a supplement to painting, but as “one swatch of material suggested
another,” he turned fully to collage, a technique he had never used before.
Keats did not want Peter to be “a white child colored brown. I wanted him to be in the book
on his own, not through the benevolence of white children or anyone else,” he explained.
“My book would have him there simply because he should have been there all along.” Only
a few years earlier, the author Helen Kay had been forced by her publisher to transform a
young black protagonist in one of her stories into a poor white child. Now, however, the
Viking Press editor Annis Duff embraced The Snowy Day; her decision to publish it in full
color, despite the high cost, was a great victory in mainstream children’s literature and an
important step in overcoming black invisibility in the field.
Above all, Keats wanted to convey an idea that had value for all children, regardless of
race: “the joy of being a little boy alive on a certain kind of day, of being for that moment.”
[61]
Clipping from Life magazine, May 13, 1940
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
The character of Peter in The Snowy Day was inspired by these photographs of an African
American boy that Keats had clipped from a copy of Life magazine some twenty years
earlier. “Long before I ever thought of doing children’s books,” he related, “I came upon
four candid photos of a little black boy. . . . His expressive face, his body attitudes, the very
way he wore his clothes, totally captivated me. I clipped the strip and stuck it on my studio
wall, where it stayed for quite a while, and then it was put away. As the years went by these
pictures would find their way back to my walls, offering me fresh pleasure at each
encounter.”
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[62]
“After breakfast he put on his snowsuit and ran outside”
Final illustration for The Snowy Day, 1962
Collage and paint on board
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
In The Snowy Day Keats wanted to evoke the universality of a childhood experience—playing
in the snow for the first time—but also the uniqueness of that experience to one particular
child. Keats discussed the interplay between these two aspects with his editor as they chose
the book’s title. “Annis Duff and I wondered if it should be A Snowy Day or The Snowy Day,
and she said [that] experiences of a special kind—although it’s the things a boy does, many,
many boys and girls do—it’s a memorable experience for him and that it would be more
appropriate to say The Snowy Day rather than A Snowy Day.”
[63]
“Crunch, crunch, crunch, his feet sank into the snow”
Final illustration for The Snowy Day, 1962
Collage and paint on board
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
“In The Snowy Day the figure you see walking through the snow is a little abstract shape. I
wanted to keep it simple,” said the artist. Keats wanted the book to be “a chunk of life, the
sensory experience in word and picture of what it feels like to hear your own body making
sounds in the snow.”
[64]
“Down fell the snow—plop!—on top of Peter’s head”
Final illustration for The Snowy Day, 1962
Collage, pencil, and paint on board
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
[65]
“So he made a smiling snowman, and he made angels”
Final illustration for The Snowy Day, 1962
Collage and paint on board
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
22
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[66]
“He pretended he was a mountain-climber”
Final illustration for The Snowy Day, 1962
Collage and paint on board
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
[67]
“He told his mother all about his adventures”
Final illustration for The Snowy Day, 1962
Collage and pencil on board
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
The critic Nancy Larrick sparked a bit of controversy in 1965 when she called the depiction
of Peter’s mother in this illustration a stereotypical “mammy,” a “huge figure in a gaudy
yellow plaid dress, albeit without the red bandanna.” The letters on view in this gallery
indicate how passionately Keats’s fans disagreed. The children’s author Ellen Tarry wrote, “I
am a stout Negro mother and my daughter has enjoyed a big lap to sit in and ample bosom
on which to lean in times of trouble. I saw Ezra Jack Keats’s mother before the book was
published and commented on the fact that she was a solid security symbol. I loved her
colorful house dress, too.”
[68]
“Before he got into bed he looked in his pocket”
Final illustration for The Snowy Day, 1962
Collage, paint, ink, and pencil on board
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
[69]
“. . . he dreamed that the sun had melted all the snow away. But when he woke up his dream
was gone”
Final illustration for The Snowy Day, 1962
Collage, paint, and pencil on board
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
EPHEMERA CASE: CRITICAL RESPONSE TO THE SNOWY DAY
[SUBSECTION PANEL]
The Snowy Day: Critical Reception
After The Snowy Day was published, “many, many people thought I was black,” said Keats.
“As a matter of fact, many were disappointed that I wasn’t!” Asked once for “the white
23
The Snowy Day and the Art of Jack Ezra Keats
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Complete Wall Text
edition of The Snowy Day,” he answered: “Like life, there is only one edition.” The book was
immediately welcomed by educators and critics and embraced by the public. But as the civil
rights movement entered a new phase of black cultural consciousness in the 1960s, it began
to meet with some criticism. “The book brought me a host of joys but also a few woes,” the
artist said.
In 1965 a Saturday Review article, “The All-White World of Children’s Books,” criticized
Keats for not addressing Peter’s race in the text. In the 1970s, another commentator called
The Snowy Day a “high point of the integrationist civil rights movement,” and an attempt to
show that “black kids were human by presenting them as colored white kids.” Such
critics, viewing the book a decade after it was published, argued that it “did little to celebrate
cultural difference, instill racial pride in black children, or challenge the supremacy of white
readers,” in the words of the scholar Maurice Berger. Yet in 1962—at a time when many
states still had segregationist laws—the most urgent need for Keats had been to treat a black
character equally to a white one. By the 1980s the cultural landscape had shifted again. “How
many literary light years separate Little Black Sambo from The Snowy Day?” a critic wrote.
“Although we have been led to believe by twenty years of reporting that Keats’s work was
special because of his use of collage, it is his vision of the universal human spirit as
personified in one pre-school black youngster that marks this book for attention.”
Throughout these debates, The Snowy Day has remained a deeply loved and profoundly
influential book. Keats would have been moved by the words of the Native American author
Sherman Alexie, who, as a child on an Indian reservation in the 1970s, had a transformative
encounter with Peter: “It was the first time I looked at a book and saw a brown, black, beige
character—a character who resembled me physically and spiritually, in all his gorgeous
loneliness and splendid isolation.”
[70]
Letter to Louise Crittenden from Langston Hughes, February 18, 1963
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
The esteemed Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes sent this letter praising The Snowy
Day to Louise Crittenden, head of publicity for children’s books at Viking Press, soon after
the book was published.
[71]
Clipping from the Saturday Review, October 2, 1965
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
Nancy Larrick’s highly critical article, “The All-White World of Children’s Books,” was
published in the Saturday Review on September 11, 1965. A later issue published Keats’s own
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sharp rebuttal, written on September 13: “In a book for children three to six years of age,
where the color of one’s skin makes it clear who is a Negro and who is white, is it arbitrarily
necessary to append racial tags? Might I suggest armbands?”
[72]
Letter to Keats from Nancy Larrick, September 17, 1965
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
Larrick answered Keats’s incensed response with a conciliatory personal letter that aimed for
a light touch but only made matters worse. She missed the meaning of the artist’s reference
to armbands, an allusion to the armbands that the Nazis had forced Jews to wear. It did not
help that she referred to Peter by the name of his dog: “I like your Willie the way he is!”
[73]
Letter to Viking Press from a parent, September 20, 1965
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
[74]
Letter to Keats from a fan, September 19, 1965
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
[75]
Letter from a librarian, September 16, 1965
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
[76]
Letter from Ellen Tarry, September 20, 1965
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
PETER’S NEIGHBORHOOD
Section text: [TEXT PANEL #4]
Peter’s Neighborhood
“I love city life,” Keats once said. “All the beauty that other people see in country life, I find
taking walks and seeing the multitudes of people. . . . I was a city kid. I wouldn’t think of
setting [my stories] anywhere I didn’t know.” A critic described a stroll with the artist as a
journey of discovery, an experience similar to entering his fictional world: “Before walking
with Keats most people might notice one, or at most two, of the things he points out;
afterwards, even alone, there’s little you will miss. The special vision of this special man is in
25
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Complete Wall Text
his books as well. He gives his readers colors and textures and objects that can forever
change the way they view the world.”
In the Peter books, Keats’s urban settings, however run-down or occasionally moody, always
include a nurturing presence: bright colors and patterns, loving friends and family. Peter’s
dog, Willie, is close by to offer him comfort and companionship; his friend Archie can rely
on him when it comes to fending off bullies or finding his elusive cat.
Keats uses vibrant collage and rich acrylic paint, often applied in thick impasto, to superb
effect. Graffiti-covered walls, trashed umbrellas, abandoned bits of lumber, and overflowing
garbage cans all have an unexpected beauty, and it is in these elements that Keats’s poetry
lies—in the overlooked and unimportant, which he moves from the background to center
stage. Peter’s narrative is an improved version of the artist’s own less happy childhood,
brought to life in radiant color and warm emotion.
[77]
“When he stopped everything turned down . . . and up . . .”
Final illustration for Whistle for Willie, 1964
Collage, paint, and pencil on board
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
Whistle for Willie introduces us to Peter’s lovable dachshund, named for Keats’s older brother.
Over several stories Willie is Peter’s sidekick and constant companion. In this first book, the
boy, now slightly older than in The Snowy Day, learns how to whistle for the dog.
[78]
“He . . . put on his father’s old hat to make himself feel more grown-up”
Final illustration for Whistle for Willie, 1964
Collage, paint, and pencil on board
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
[79]
“He jumped off his shadow. But when he landed they were together again”
Final illustration for Whistle for Willie, 1964
Collage, paint, and pencil on board
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
[80]
“Peter’s mother asked him and Willie to go on an errand to the grocery store”
Final illustration for Whistle for Willie, 1964
26
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Complete Wall Text
Collage and paint on board
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
In the book’s charming finale, Peter, trailed by Willie, heads home from an errand, proudly
whistling the whole way. Keats’s friend Charlemae Rollins was especially delighted with
Whistle for Willie. A librarian and author who campaigned to end the stereotyped portrayal of
black people in children’s literature, she wrote to him: “It’s my only bright hope in this
‘Summer of Goldwater’ ”—a reference to the decision by the influential Republican Senator
Barry Goldwater to oppose the Civil Rights Act, enacted on July 2, 1964.
[81]
“Peter looked into his sister Susie’s room”
Final illustration for Peter’s Chair, 1967
Collage and paint on board
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
In Peter’s Chair, the title character learns to adjust to the arrival of a younger sister in the
family.
[82]
“ ‘Let’s run away, Willie,’ he said”
Final illustration for Peter’s Chair, 1967
Collage and paint on board
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
Peter is upset by the new baby. His parents ask him to play more quietly and his old cradle,
high chair, and crib—now painted a shocking pink—are passed on to his sister. To save his
favorite chair from the same fate he decides to run away. Here, Peter tenderly shares his plan
with Willie. “We’ll take my blue chair, my toy crocodile and the picture of me when I was a
baby,” says the boy, who has the foresight to fill a shopping bag with cookies and dog
biscuits while Willie gets his bone. Although Keats had no younger sibling, he captured the
feeling of sibling rivalry perfectly.
[83]
“But he couldn’t fit in the chair. He was too big!”
Final illustration for Peter’s Chair, 1967
Collage and paint on board
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
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The Snowy Day and the Art of Jack Ezra Keats
November 15, 2012–February 24, 2013
Complete Wall Text
When he realizes that he has outgrown his beloved chair, Peter begins to accept his new role
as an older brother, and he and Willie are lured back into the house in time for lunch. As a
child, Keats too had run away from home one day, but his experience had been far more
unsettling than Peter’s. When he returned home at nightfall, frightened and tired, his mother
had locked him out to teach him a lesson.
[84]
“And they did”
Final illustration for Peter’s Chair, 1967
Collage and paint on board
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
By book’s end, Peter has come to terms with the new sibling: “ ‘Daddy,’ said Peter, ‘let’s
paint the little chair pink for Susie,’ ” reads the text for the illustration preceding this one.
[87a-d]
Research photographs for A Letter to Amy, 1968
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
Keats often used photographs as sources for his illustrations—both pictures he found in
magazines and newspapers and snapshots he took himself as he walked around New York.
In notes published on the dust jacket of A Letter to Amy, Keats described his urban settings
in poetic, even romantic terms: “I want to share with children my unexpected encounters
with the City’s surprising beauties, with the exciting reflections of the City world on the
sidewalks, the layers upon layers of weathered and tattered billboards—the city’s equivalent
of the mosses of the forest.”
[88]
Dust jacket
Final illustration for A Letter to Amy, 1968
Watercolor, collage, and paint on board
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
As a private joke, Keats scrawled the names of relations, friends, and colleagues on this
graffiti-covered wall, including those of his brother, Willie; his lifelong friend Martin “Itz”
Pope; Pope’s wife, Lily, and daughters Debby and Mimi; his friend the author Fran
Manushkin; and Ursula Nordstrom, the legendary children’s-book editor at Harper & Row.
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The Snowy Day and the Art of Jack Ezra Keats
November 15, 2012–February 24, 2013
Complete Wall Text
[89]
“Walking to the mailbox, Peter looked at the sky”
Final illustration for A Letter to Amy, 1968
Collage, watercolor, paint, and crayon on board
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
[90]
“In his great hurry, Peter bumped into Amy”
Final illustration for A Letter to Amy, 1968
Watercolor, paint, and collage on board
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
From page to page, the artist uses a range of techniques to capture the mood of a stormy day
in the city. The children’s-book critic of The New York Times was captivated: “Keats’s
illustrations are something else again. He’s a master storm-maker sending dark clouds
scudding across the sky ‘like wild horses,’ ripping the overcast with electric bolts, showing us
postered walls, sidewalk hopscotch scribbles, blurred reflections in a puddle in a wild,
wonderful light. This man makes a rainy day beautiful with his rainbow colors.”
[91]
“Quickly he stuffed the letter into the mailbox”
Final illustration for A Letter to Amy, 1968
Watercolor, paint, and collage on board
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
Referring no doubt to this image, a reviewer humorously commented: “With all the urgings
to use the zip code, I’m not sure this Harper title wasn’t underwritten by the Post Office.”
[92]
“On his way to meet Peter, Archie saw someone new on the block”
Final illustration for Hi, Cat!, 1970
Paint and collage on board
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
Winner of the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award, Hi, Cat! follows Peter and his friend
Archie around the neighborhood, trailed by an interfering alley cat. Archie, whom we first
met in Goggles!, is now older and more central to the story than Peter. Keats had vivid
childhood memories of a neighbor’s feisty cat, a former stray that may have been his model.
The neighbor, Mr. Max, had found it in an alley. “Love at first squint. The cat became [his]
29
The Snowy Day and the Art of Jack Ezra Keats
November 15, 2012–February 24, 2013
Complete Wall Text
henchman and a terrible menace to the mice who dared to venture forth in the dark hours of
the night,” Keats recalled. “He’s a mazik,” Mr. Max would say of his pet, using the Yiddish
term for rascal.
[93]
“ ‘It would have been great if it wasn’t for that crazy cat,’ said Peter as they walked home”
Final illustration for Hi, Cat!, 1970
Watercolor, paint, and pastel on board
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
[85]
Endpapers
Final illustration for Pet Show!, 1972
Paint and collage on board
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
A book’s endpapers are a wonderful showcase for an illustrator, allowing the artist the
freedom to include a large picture without having to relate it directly to a text.
[86]
“ ‘It’s time for the pet show!’ . . . Archie ran into the building”
Final illustration for Pet Show!, 1972
Paint, collage, and crayon on board
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
Pet Show! is the seventh and last book featuring Peter. With the emergence in the late 1960s
of African American children’s authors and illustrators whose stories emanated from within
the black community, Keats turned his attention to other children in Peter’s neighborhood
such as Roberto, the Hispanic protagonist of Dreams (1974), and shy Louie—the white
character who is the artist’s stand-in.
SPIRITUALITY AND NATURE
[PANEL TEXT]
Spirituality, Nature, and Asian Art
Some of Keats’s most introspective work was inspired by the Asian art and culture he so
admired. He especially loved the traditional Japanese haiku form, as reflected in his
exquisitely pared-down illustrations for In a Spring Garden (1965), an anthology of haiku
poems, with silhouetted birds and incandescent skies of hand-marbled paper. Keats
mastered this ancient Chinese craft, a technique in which oily paints and inks are floated on
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The Snowy Day and the Art of Jack Ezra Keats
November 15, 2012–February 24, 2013
Complete Wall Text
the surface of a dish of water, into which a sheet of paper is dipped to achieve intricate
patterns.
Like the haiku poets, Keats expressed his reverence for life through his delicate
explorations of the beauty of nature. He considered God Is in the Mountain (1966) “the book
that sums up the meaning of the world for me.” He both selected and illustrated this
collection of poetic sayings about life, nature, and the divine, which he gathered from
different religions, cultures, and times. His art for the book—the most abstract and tonally
subdued that he produced—meshes seamlessly with the text’s spiritual insights.
Keats’s yearning for spirituality, his interest in Asian art, and his respect for nature all
coalesce in the opening illustration for John Henry: An American Legend. He illuminates his
own retelling of the story with a magical first scene in which the night sky, stunningly
rendered in marbled paper, pays tribute to the birth of the mythic American folk hero.
[106]
Page from dummy book for The Giant Turnip (unpublished), c. 1982
Watercolor and pencil on paper
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
In The Giant Turnip, a farmer grows a spectacularly big turnip and must recruit his entire
family, a dog, a cat, and a mouse to extract the enormous vegetable from the ground. Keats
chose to set the story, originally a humorous Russian folktale, in Japan. He had once seen it
performed there by the Ohanashi Caravan puppeteers at a Buddhist kindergarten. During
that visit, he had taken photographs of rural Japanese villages to help him set the scenes. The
book was nearing completion at the time of the artist’s death in 1983.
[107]
Keats’s Japan journal, 1973
Ink on paper
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
Keats became interested in Japan in the early 1970s, when Peter’s Chair (1967) was translated
into Japanese, and first went there in 1973. In his travel journal he recorded impressions of
Mount Fuji; meetings with Japanese children, mothers, and librarians; and puppet
performances of the Ohanashi Caravan, a traveling storytelling and puppetry troupe.
[101]
“A hush settled over the hills. The sky swirled soundlessly round the moon”
Final illustration for John Henry: An American Legend, 1965
Collage on marbled paper, mounted on board
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The Snowy Day and the Art of Jack Ezra Keats
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Complete Wall Text
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
The story of John Henry, the legendary railroad worker who was stronger and faster than a
steam hammer, has special meaning in African American folklore. He is a hero of the
working class, a man of mythic strength, a builder of America. Keats understood the
power of such a figure for children and retold the tale vividly, in both words and pictures.
His illustrations, wrote a reviewer, “ripple and pulsate with energetic beauty and have
much of the same strength of the man ‘who died with his hammer in his hand.’ ”
[102]
“And John Henry was born, born with a hammer in his hand!”
Final illustration for John Henry: An American Legend, 1965
Collage, paint, and pencil on board
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
[103]
“He said goodbye to his mother and father, and off he went”
Final illustration for John Henry: An American Legend, 1965
Collage, paint, and pencil on paper
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
The identity of the real John Henry has been the subject of much discussion. To prepare for
the book, the artist visited the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture of the New
York Public Library and read accounts of the probable model for the tale: a man employed
by the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad who worked on the Big Bend Tunnel in West Virginia
in 1872.
[104]
“ ‘Oooh, I’m hurt bad,’ he groaned. ‘I can’t get up.’ ”
Final illustration for John Henry: An American Legend, 1965
Paint, collage, and pencil on board
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
Despite being wounded, John Henry saves his fellow crew members from an untimely
explosion while digging a tunnel through a mountain for the railroad.
[105]
“Light streamed into the dark tunnel. John Henry had broken through!”
Final illustration for John Henry: An American Legend, 1965
32
The Snowy Day and the Art of Jack Ezra Keats
November 15, 2012–February 24, 2013
Complete Wall Text
Paint and collage on board
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
After racing and beating the steam drill, John Henry emerges from the tunnel into the light
of day. But at the story’s end he collapses and dies from sheer exhaustion, hammer in hand.
EPHEMERA CASE: JAPAN
[108]
Letter to Keats from Sachiko Saionji, March 3, 1973
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
The puppeteer Sachiko Saionji of the Ohanashi Caravan served as Keats’s guide and
translator during his first visit to Japan. In this letter, she describes how rollerskating had
become popular with children in the city of Kiyose, near Tokyo, after they read Keats’s book
Skates!—a hilarious, almost wordless story about two clumsy dogs who try to learn to skate.
A group of mothers, worried about the danger of skating in the street, had pressed the
mayor to build a rink. The mothers succeeded: the rink was built and was named for Keats.
He traveled to Japan a second time in 1974 to attend its dedication (see photograph at left).
[109]
Letter to Keats from Mitsue Ishitake, May 31, 1973
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
In this letter Mitsue Ishitake, a member of the Ohanashi Caravan, thanks Keats for sending
her one of his illustrations for In a Spring Garden (1965) as a gift, and remembers his visit
warmly.
[110]
Ohanashi Caravan notes, c. 1973
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
The Ohanashi Caravan kept a record of children’s reactions during a screening of film
adaptations of Keats’s books The Snowy Day, Whistle for Willie, and Peter’s Chair. A photograph
reproduced here shows the group of puppeteers posing in front of their bus, decorated with
an image from The Giant Turnip, a folktale that the troupe performed and that Keats was later
inspired to illustrate.
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The Snowy Day and the Art of Jack Ezra Keats
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Complete Wall Text
[111 & 112]
Letter to Keats from Toshiko Ishida and reply from Keats, June 29 and July 25, 1977
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
While Keats’s first two visits to Japan were joyous occasions, his third, in the fall of 1977,
was sober. The trip was prompted in part by this letter from the mother of a nine-year-old
boy, Akira Ishida, who had been killed in a traffic accident. Dreams had been the last book
her son had read, the day before he died, and his favorite book, Peter’s Chair, which Keats
had autographed during his first visit, had been placed in the boy’s coffin. Deeply affected,
the artist wrote back and later visited Akira’s family and his grave (see photograph at left).
He dedicated the Japanese edition of his book The Trip to Akira’s memory.
[113]
Postcard to Keats from Toshiko Ishida, May 31, 1978
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
Keats continued to correspond with Ms. Ishida almost to the end of his life, sending her
Japanese editions of his books and collaborating with her in the planning of a memorial
book for her son, Akira.
[100]
Dust jacket
Final illustration for In a Spring Garden, edited by Richard Lewis, 1965
Collage on board
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
In a Spring Garden is a series of haikus by several Japanese poets that follow a spring day from
early morning to night.
[99]
“Just simply alive”
Final illustration for In a Spring Garden, edited by Richard Lewis, 1965
Collage on marbled paper, mounted on board
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
34
The Snowy Day and the Art of Jack Ezra Keats
November 15, 2012–February 24, 2013
Complete Wall Text
This beautiful scene illustrates a poem by Kobayashi Issa (1763–1828), one of Japan’s
greatest and most revered masters of haiku:
Just simply alive,
Both of us, I
And the poppy.
[98]
“ . . . weave for us a garment of brightness (American Indian, Tewa Pueblo)”
Final illustration for God Is in the Mountain, 1966
Collage on board
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
This evocative illustration accompanies verses excerpted by Keats from the Tewa poem
“Song of the Sky Loom,” which envisions nature as a garment for humanity.
[97]
“The heavens declare the glory of God . . . (Judaism)”
Final illustration for God Is in the Mountain, 1966
Paint on marbled paper, mounted on board
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
God Is in the Mountain is a collection of texts about spirituality, drawn from the world’s
religions. Keats paired this illustration, one of the most abstract in the book, with the two
sayings he had selected to represent Judaism: “The heavens declare the glory of God,” a
verse from Psalms (19:2), and “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And if I am only
for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?,” a famous maxim by Rabbi Hillel, the great
Jewish scholar of the first century BCE.
[96]
“ . . . in a soft shady glen, lived a mother firefly and her little flies ten”
Final illustration for Over in the Meadow, by Olive A. Wadsworth, 1971
Collage and paint on marbled paper, mounted on board
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
[95]
Endpapers
Final illustration for Over in the Meadow, by Olive A. Wadsworth, 1971
Collage and watercolor on board
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The Snowy Day and the Art of Jack Ezra Keats
November 15, 2012–February 24, 2013
Complete Wall Text
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
Keats furnishes luscious illustrations for the popular song Over in the Meadow, in which ten
different animals instruct their young.
[94]
“Finally, he reached the King’s high palace”
Final illustration for The King’s Fountain, by Lloyd Alexander, 1971
Paint on marbled paper, mounted on board
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
In addition to writing his own books, Keats continued throughout much of his career to
illustrate the works of others. Originally, he created the art in The King’s Fountain for “Elijah
the Slave,” a story by Isaac Bashevis Singer. (See the dummy book in the case nearby.) The
project was abandoned, but the dramatic paintings inspired Lloyd Alexander, author of
popular fantasy novels for young readers, to write a story to accompany them.
EPHEMERA CASE: ISRAEL
[114]
Keats’s Israel journal, 1982
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
A trip to Israel in 1982, toward the end of his life, stirred profound emotions in Keats. Here,
he records being overwhelmed with feeling during his visit to the Wailing Wall.
[115]
Dummy book for Where Is God? (unpublished), c. 1982
Pencil on paper
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
At his death in 1983, Keats left a complete sketched storyboard and this rough dummy for a
book entitled Where Is God? Though the narrative concerns itself with spiritual matters, it
does so with a light hand and a touch of humor. The schematic scenes depict a set of
characters engaged in the search for God. At book’s end one concludes, “I guess He’s
everywhere,” while another answers: “What makes you so sure He’s a he?”
36
The Snowy Day and the Art of Jack Ezra Keats
November 15, 2012–February 24, 2013
Complete Wall Text
[116]
Dummy book for Elijah the Slave, by Isaac Bashevis Singer, c. 1970
Colored pencil on paper
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
Although Keats completed the art for Elijah the Slave, a collaboration with Isaac Bashevis
Singer, the book was not realized as originally planned. Instead Lloyd Alexander wrote an
inspiring new text, The King’s Fountain, to accompany Keats’s illustrations.
KEATS STUDIO &EPILOGUE
[PANEL TEXT]
Epilogue: A Life Transformed by Art
In the four Louie books, showcased at the beginning of the exhibition, Ezra Jack Keats tells
the story of Jack Katz, his introverted and creative young self. The finales for the books, on
display in this section, provide a moving epilogue to his personal and artistic trajectory.
At the conclusion of Louie, the boy runs toward Gussie the puppet, arms wide open. It is no
accident that Gussie was named for Keats’s emotionally distant mother: he closes his story
with the very embrace he had longed for as a child. At the end of Louie’s fantastic journey in
The Trip, Keats smiles from a window in his old Brooklyn neighborhood. And in the final
scene of Louie’s Search, the artist casts himself at least twice: as a boy, in the character of
Louie, and as the truck driver in the parade celebrating the wedding of Louie’s mother to
Barney the junkman. A waving bystander sporting a moustache may also be Keats, as
spectator of his own improved childhood.
But it is in the last spread for Regards to the Man in the Moon, published two years before his
death, that Keats fully affirms his belief in the power of art to change a life. For the first and
only known time he visually declares himself to be an artist by inserting himself into the
picture, brush in hand. Together with Barney and Peg, he admires a scene of his own
creation, looking affectionately at the children at play, their lives transformed through
creativity and imagination, as his own had been.
[117]
Keats’s palette, paints, and brushes
Private Collection
“On Keats’s drawing table are brushes, paints, crayons, toothbrushes, tweezers, sand,
erasers, rollers, scissors, and paste,” reported a visitor to his studio. “Behind him is a
cabinet of many long, flat drawers filled with various types of papers and materials, dried
leaves, strips of fabric, old valentines, postcards, lithographs, paper flowers, fans, and
wallpaper which may eventually find their way into his books.” The walls were decorated
with treasured letters and pictures sent to him by children from all over the world. Keats
loved the art made by children, remarking, “Any artist, even a Picasso, would turn green
37
The Snowy Day and the Art of Jack Ezra Keats
November 15, 2012–February 24, 2013
Complete Wall Text
with envy. . . . It is marked by innocence, freshness, originality and an incredible flood of
feeling.”
[118a – k]
Collage materials gathered by Keats
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
[119]
Jennie’s hat, c. 1966
Mixed media
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
Inspired by his own collages for Jennie’s Hat (1966), one of which is on view nearby, Keats
fashioned this whimsical hat.
[120]
“They added a picture of swans . . . leaves . . . and some paper flowers”
Final illustration for Jennie’s Hat, 1966
Collage and paint on paper
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
Filled with superb collages, Jennie’s Hat is Keats’s first story with a female protagonist. In the
book, Jennie longs for a fancy hat but is given a very plain one by her aunt instead. Birds
come to the rescue and soon the hat becomes an amazing creation to behold.
[Photo Reproduction]
Keats in his studio, 1970s
Photographic reproduction
Courtesy of the Ezra Jack Keats Foundation
[121]
Final illustration for Louie, 1975
Paint on board
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
[122]
“Louie took them for a ride on his plane”
Final illustration for The Trip, 1978
Collage, paint, and crayon on board
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The Snowy Day and the Art of Jack Ezra Keats
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Complete Wall Text
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
This vibrant collage is a true celebration of Louie’s fantastic return to his old neighborhood
and, by extension, of Keats’s own homecoming through his art.
[123]
“Barney and Peg got married!”
Final illustration for Louie’s Search, 1980
Paint and collage on board
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
[124]
“The next day, they told everybody about their adventures”
Final illustration for Regards to the Man in the Moon, 1981
Paint, collage, and watercolor on board
Ezra Jack Keats Papers, de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, McCain Library and
Archives, The University of Southern Mississippi
Only at the very end of his life did Keats depict himself as an artist (at far right).
Excerpts from Ezra Jack Keats: His Life and Art, 2009
Initial production by Red Dory Productions and Searchlight Films, edited by Niger Miles,
The Jewish Museum, New York, 2011
4 min. 28 sec.
Copyright 2009, Weston Woods Studios, Inc. Used with permission of Weston Woods
Studios and the Ezra Jack Keats Foundation
39