The Snowy Day (book)

Do you feel that. The smooth, cool cover in your hands and the gentle weight of my pages. Listen closely as you open me. Swish, rustle, turn. That is the sound of my story waking up. Inside, you can see bright, happy colors against a world covered in a soft, white blanket of snow. It is a quiet morning, and everything is new and waiting. A little boy named Peter, wearing a bright red snowsuit, steps out his door into the city wonderland. His eyes are wide with excitement for the adventure about to begin. I hold his special journey inside my pages, because I am the book called The Snowy Day.

My maker was a kind and thoughtful man named Ezra Jack Keats. He was an artist who believed that every single child deserved to see themselves as the hero of a story. Many years ago, he saw a picture in a magazine of a little boy with a happy, curious face, and he kept it, waiting for the right moment. That moment came in 1962, when he decided to create me. He did not just draw my pictures. He made them with a special kind of art called collage. He carefully cut and pasted colorful papers to make Peter’s snowsuit look warm and his world feel real. He used special stamps with lacy patterns and splattered ink with a toothbrush to make the snow look deep and crunchy. He wanted you to feel the cold air and hear the crunch, crunch, crunch of Peter’s boots in the snow with every turn of the page.

When I first arrived in bookstores, I was very special. At that time, it was rare to find a picture book with a hero who looked like Peter. For many children, I was like a mirror. They could look at Peter’s adventure and see their own joy and their own faces smiling back at them. For other children, I was a window. They could look through my pages and meet a new friend, sharing in the fun of a perfect snowy day in the city. Because my pictures were so full of love and imagination, I was given a very important prize called the Caldecott Medal on January 1st, 1963. It was a wonderful honor, but my greatest joy was being held by families, sharing Peter’s story together before bedtime.

Many years have passed since my first snow, but the magic inside my pages is still fresh. The simple happiness of making the first footprint in a clean patch of snow, or the fun of making a snow angel, is something children everywhere can understand. Peter’s adventure is their adventure, too. I am more than just paper and ink. I am a warm reminder that the world is full of wonder, and that every child, no matter who they are or where they live, deserves to be the star of their own beautiful story.