Ezra Keats praised for 'Snow Day'

FIFTY YEARS ago a children's book published with little fanfare changed the complexion of children's literature forever.

The book, The Snow Day by Jack Ezra Keats, is a simple story about a boy named Peter experiencing the joy of a snowy day. What made it a breakthrough was that Peter was African-American.

Deborah Pope, executive director of the Ezra Jack Keats Foundation, is someone who has documented the influence of the book. She said an elementary schoolteacher told her that in the 1960s her students, both black and white, always used pink paint when they painted portraits of themselves. But after sharing this book with her class, the African-American students began choosing brown paint to draw themselves.

And Native American author Sherman Alexie, when he received the National Book Award in 2007, thanked the late Keats for giving him the chance to see himself in literature for the first time.

Keats' book, published in 1962, was so groundbreaking that it earned him the title of "granddaddy of diversity."

But Pope said it was never Keats' intention to write a book about race. Peter's race is never mentioned.

"The little boy got hit by a snowball. It doesn't have anything to do with race," said Pope. "It could have been a girl or boy, black child or an Asian child. It's what children feel."

It was that innocence which made it an influential classic. Many readers assumed the author was African-American. Of those who realized he wasn't, there were some who criticized him for writing a book about the black experience, because he was a Jew.

His response to that criticism was simple, Pope said. "He wrote about childhood in a book that speaks to children, and children understand the wonder of the snow. It was not the white experience, black experience or Asian experience. It is the wonder of going out in the snow. That can't be confined to one race."

Keats never imagined that he would change children's literature. Throughout his prolific career, he wrote dozens of books about boys and girls of different races experiencing various adventures. As a result, he inspired writers of all races.

"With many artists, [they show] the way they see the world," Pope said. "He was not necessarily setting out to change it, but recording what he saw."

Although Keats' "The Snowy Day" was written 50 years ago, the lack of diversity in children's literature continues to be an issue. The Cooperative Children's Book Center reports that in 2010, of the 3,400 books published for children and teens, only 9 percent had significant nonwhite content.

"The Snowy Day," nevertheless, remains a children's classic and a staple in libraries and classrooms. In honor of the book's 50th anniversary, a special edition of The Snowy Day (Penguin Group) has been published with eight pages never seen before plus bonus material about Keats and the writing of the book.