Ezra Jack Keats facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Ezra Jack Keats
|
|
|---|---|
Keats, circa 1980
|
|
| Born | Jacob Ezra Katz March 11, 1916 Brooklyn, New York |
| Died | May 6, 1983 (aged 67) |
| Occupation | Illustrator, writer |
| Nationality | American |
| Period | 1960–1983 |
| Genre | Children's picture books |
| Notable works | |
| Notable awards | Caldecott Medal 1963 |
Ezra Jack Keats (March 11, 1916 – May 6, 1983) was an American writer and illustrator of children's books. He won the 1963 Caldecott Medal for illustrating The Snowy Day, which he also wrote. Keats wrote A Letter to Amy and Hi, Cat! but he was most famous for The Snowy Day. It is considered one of the most important American books of the 20th century.
Keats is best known for introducing multiculturalism into mainstream American children's literature. He was one of the first children’s book authors to use an urban setting for his stories and he developed the use of collage as a medium for illustration.
Contents
Books
Keats' works have been translated into some 20 languages, including Japanese, French, Danish, Norwegian, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Turkish, German, Swedish, Thai, Chinese, and Korean.
My Dog Is Lost was Keats' first attempt at writing his own children's book, co-authored with Pat Cherr, in 1960. The main character, Juanito, is an eight-year-old Spanish speaker newly arrived in New York City from Puerto Rico who has lost his dog. Searching throughout the city, he is helped by children in Chinatown, Little Italy, Park Avenue and Harlem. In this early work, Keats incorporated Spanish words into the story and featured minority children as central characters.
Two years later, Viking published The Snowy Day, which received the Caldecott Medal for the most distinguished picture book for children in 1963. The story follows a very young boy named Peter as he spends a day playing in the snow. Peter is African-American, although his race is never mentioned. Peter was inspired by a Life magazine clipping from 1940. Keats wrote, "Then began an experience that turned my life around — working on a book with a black kid as hero. None of the manuscripts I'd been illustrating featured any black kids — except for token blacks in the background. My book would have him there simply because he should have been there all along."
After years of illustrating books written by others, Keats found a voice of his own through Peter. The techniques that give The Snowy Day its unique look — collage with cutouts of patterned paper fabric and oilcloth; handmade stamps; spatterings of India ink with a toothbrush — were methods Keats had never used before. "I was like a child playing," he wrote. "I was in a world with no rules." The Snowy Day was one of 22 books written and illustrated by Keats, and more than any other, became a classic of children's literature.
Peter appears in a total of seven books, during which he grows and matures: Whistle for Willie, Peter's Chair, A Letter to Amy, Goggles!, Hi, Cat! and Pet Show!. Keats skillfully weaves into his plots a sense of the dilemmas and even dangers his protagonists face. In The Snowy Day Peter, about four years old, yearns to join a snowball fight but learns he is too small when a stray snowball knocks him down. Later, he learns how to assume the role of older brother (Peter's Chair), to stand up to his friends when he invites a girl to his birthday party (A Letter to Amy), and to avoid the violence of a gang of older boys (Goggles!).
One of Keats' signature story elements is that the children in his books are consistently challenged with real problems that are recognizable to young readers; in solving them, the characters learn and mature. In a later series of four books beginning with Louie, Keats introduces a silent, lonely and brooding child who responds to a puppet during a puppet show with a joyous Hello! Louie lives largely in his imagination, constructing a diorama in a shoebox and escaping into it in The Trip, and building a spaceship out of detritus and traveling among the planets in Regards to the Man in the Moon. But he is resilient enough to search for a candidate for a stepfather, and find one, in Louie's Search, and to learn to stand up to taunts from other children. Keats has said that Louie is the character he most related to, having felt invisible and unloved as a child and escaping through his creative pursuits.
Many of Keats' stories portray family life and the simple pleasures in a child's daily routine.
Honors and memorials
Among the many honors Keats received for his 20-year contribution to children’s literature are:
- The Snowy Day was awarded the Caldecott Medal and named one of the 150 most influential books of the 20th century by the New York Public Library.
- Keats was the first artist invited to design greeting cards for UNICEF.
- A skating rink in Kiyose, Japan, was named after him, in honor of his book Skates!.
- Keats was a member of the White House Forum on Child Development and the Mass Media and appeared on the celebrated PBS show Mister Rogers' Neighborhood several times; Sesame Street featured his book Peter's Chair, read aloud by First Lady Barbara Bush.
- He was awarded The University of Southern Mississippi Silver Medallion in 1980 during the Fay B. Kaigler Children's Book Festival as outstanding children's book author-illustrator.
- The city of Portland, Oregon, honored him with a parade, as did his readers in Tokyo, Japan.
- The Imagination Playground was set up by the Prospect Park Alliance in Brooklyn, New York, based on the characters from Keats' books. The centerpiece is a much visited bronze statue of Peter with his dog Willie, where a story hour takes place weekly in the summer.
- P.S. 253 in Brooklyn was renamed the Ezra Jack Keats International School.
- In 2014, the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles created a major retrospective of Keats' life and career. Outlets such as The Daily News, L.A. Weekly, and Time Out covered the exhibit. The National Endowment for the Arts also covered the exhibit on their Art Works blog.
- In 2017, the United States Postal Service created Forever stamps in honor of Keats's Snowy Day. Outlets such as the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, and the Washington Post covered the stamps' release.
Books written and illustrated
- My Dog Is Lost (1960)
- The Snowy Day (1962) — Caldecott Medal winner
- Whistle for Willie (1964)
- John Henry, An American Legend (1965)
- Jennie's Hat (1966)
- Peter's Chair (1967)
- A Letter to Amy (1968)
- Goggles! (1969) — a Caldecott runner-up
- Hi, Cat! (1970)
- Apt. 3 (1971)
- Pet Show! (1972)
- Skates! (1973)
- Pssst! Doggie- (1973)
- Dreams (1974)
- Kitten for a Day (1974)
- Louie (1975)
- The Trip (1978)
- Maggie and the Pirate (1979)
- Louie's Search (1980)
- Regards to the Man in the Moon (1981)
- Clementina's Cactus (1982)
- One Red Sun, A Counting Book (1998)
Books adapted or compiled
- In a Spring Garden (edited by Richard Lewis, 1965)
- The Naughty Boy: A Poem (by John Keats, 1965)
- God is in the Mountain (1966)
- The Little Drummer Boy (by Katherine Davis, Henry Ohorati and Harry Simeone, 1968)
- Night (compiled by Ezra Jack Keats, photographs by Beverly Hall, 1969)
- Over in the Meadow (by Olive A. Wadsworth, 1971)
Books illustrated
- Over 85 books were illustrated by Ezra Jack Keats, not including the titles which he helped to write and/or edit. Most of these illustrated works were completed before his debut as an author/illustrator.
