Born in 1916 Ezra Jack Keats worked as an “inker” for a printer and a comic book artist before deciding to become an author and illustrator of children’s books.

Ezra Jack Keats
found a picture
of a little boy in
a newspaper, the
clipping hung on
his wall for years
before Ezra
decided to make
“Peter” the star
character in many
of his stories. Keats
thought that minority
children were not
being fairly represented
in children’s literature
and he decided to
spend his life
making these
children
central characters in
his books.

The Snowy Day was later awarded the Caldecott Medal for outstanding illustrations.

Children in Nursery through Second grade will be listening to the stories of Ezra Jack Keats while exploring the characters, setting, and plot of the stories.

In The Snowy Day the children will sequence the story and graph their favorite things to do on a snowy day.

Another story we will explore this month is A Letter to Amy,  children will choose a partner and draw or write a letter like the one in the story. We will also graph the children’s birthdays after discussing the birthday invitation that Peter sent to Amy.

Peter’s Chair is another of Ezra Jack Keats most popular books. Peter, again the main character in the story, has a hard time sharing his things with his new baby sister. As a class we will focus on the feelings many of us share when a new sibling is introduced into a family.
Ezra Jack Keats is an author from my childhood and I am excited to share these timeless stories with my library classes.

❤Mrs. Stevenson