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Life and career

Early life

Ezra Jack Keats was born Jacob Ezra Katz on March 11, 1916 in East New York, Brooklyn, the third child of poor Polish-Jewish immigrants Benjamin Katz and Augusta Podgainy. Jack, as he was known, was artistically gifted from an early age, making pictures out of whatever scraps of wood, cloth and paper that he could collect. Benjamin Katz, who worked as a waiter, tried to discourage his son, insisting that artists lived terrible, impoverished lives. Nevertheless, he sometimes brought home tubes of paint, claiming, “A starving artist swapped this for a bowl of soup.”

With little encouragement at home, Keats sought validation for his skills at school and learned about art at the public library. Keats attended Thomas Jefferson High School, where he won a national contest run by Scholastic for an oil painting depicting hobos warming themselves around a fire. At his graduation, in January 1935, he was to receive the senior class medal for excellence in art. Two days before the ceremony, Benjamin Katz died in the street of a heart attack. When Keats identified his father's body, he later wrote, “I found myself staring deep into his secret feelings. There in his wallet were worn and tattered newspaper clippings of the notices of the awards I had won. My silent admirer and supplier, he had been torn between his dread of my leading a life of hardship and his real pride in my work.”

Early career

His father's death curtailed his dream of attending art school. For the remainder of the Great Depression, Keats took art classes when he could and worked at a number of jobs, most notably as a mural painter under the New Deal program the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and as a comic book illustrator. At Fawcett Publications, he illustrated backgrounds for the Captain Marvel comic strip.

Drafted into the military in 1943, he spent his service time designing camouflage patterns for the U.S. Army Air Force. He was discharged in 1945.

In 1947 he petitioned to legally change his name to Ezra Jack Keats, in reaction to the anti-Semitic prejudice of the time. His brother, Willie, had already changed his last name to Keats; his sister, Mae, retained the name Katz.

An Educational Subsistence Allowance of $16.25 a month from the Veterans Administration enabled Keats to take a course at the Art Students League. An "une annee scolaire en France" was also made possible by the Veteran's Administration, as well as by a generous donation from Keats's older brother, Willie. From April to November 1949, Keats lived in Paris and developed a renewed confidence in his own powers. In a letter to a friend, Keats elaborated, "There are emerging some new colors, some new combinations of media perhaps & slowly and quite certainly the painting is improving and taking shape." He took courses in painting, sculpture and drawing at the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere and took advantage of opportunities to visit England and Italy. To satisfy his travel bug, Keats had to earn extra money; he managed to sell several paintings, many of which are still in private collections today.

On his return to New York, he focused on earning a living as a commercial artist, with the backup plan to become a teacher if all else failed. His illustrations began to appear in Reader's Digest, The New York Times Book Review, Collier's and Playboy, and on the jackets of popular books. His work was displayed in Fifth Avenue store windows, and the Associated American Artists Gallery, in New York City, gave him exhibitions in 1950 and 1954.

Children's Books

In his unpublished autobiography, Keats wrote, “I didn't even ask to get into children's books.” In fact, he was asked to do so by Elizabeth Riley of Crowell, which brought out his first children's title, Jubilant for Sure, written by Elisabeth Hubbard Lansing, in 1954. To prepare for the assignment, Keats traveled to rural Tennessee, where the story takes place, to sketch. Many children's books followed, including the Danny Dunn adventure series, by Jay Williams and Raymond Abrashkin, and an ethnographic series by Tillie S. Pine and Joseph Levine, beginning with The Indians Knew. All told, Keats illustrated nearly 70[EXACT NUMBER - website page problem] books written by other authors.

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.

The Snowy Day was published two years later and 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 in the book, he became the first black character published in mainstream American children's books. The Snowy Day was one of 22 books written and illustrated by Keats, and more than any of his other books, became a classic of children's literature. CITE NYPL 100 GREATEST BOOKS LIST

Death

In 1983, at age 67, Keats died following a heart attack. His last projects included designing the sets for a musical version of his book The Trip (which would later become the stage production Captain Louie), designing a poster for The New Theater of Brooklyn, and writing and illustrating a retelling of the folktale “The Giant Turnip.” He never married and often said that his characters were his children.

Ezra Jack Keats Foundation

The Ezra Jack Keats Foundation was incorporated in 1964, with Ezra as President and Martin Pope as Secretary, as a vehicle for Ezra’s personal contributions. When Ezra died in 1983, his will directed that the Foundation use the royalties from his books to support programs helpful to humanity. Under the administration of his close friends Martin and Lillie Pope, the foundation dedicated itself to preserving the quality of Keats' books and artworks, promoting children's literacy and creativity, and maintaining quality and diversity in children's literature. The Keats Archive, which includes original artwork and correspondence, is housed at the University of Southern Mississippi as part of the de Grummond Children's Literature Collection.

The Snowy Day

About

Viking published The Snowy Day in 1962. The story begins with Peter, a four-year-old boy, waking up to snow outside his window. Dressed in a red snowsuit, Peter goes outside to experience his first snowy day. He finds he is too young to play in a snowball fight with older boys, but he still has fun crunching through the snow and making snow angels. Returning home, Peter saves a snowball in his coat pocket. He relates the events of his day to his mother and thinks about them contentedly during his bath. Just before bed Peter checks his coat pocket to discover the snowball is gone and his pocket is wet. Disappointed, he goes to sleep and wakes up to a new snowy day.

Multiculturalism

The Snowy Day was groundbreaking as it was the first mainstream children's book to feature an African-American child as the main character. 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.” The character of Peter was inspired by a Life magazine clipping from 1940, showing four photographs of a small Georgia boy progressing from a smile to tears in reaction to a blood test. Ezra explained keeping the clipping for more than 20 years before using it, "Years before, I had cut from a magazine a strip of photos of a little black boy. I just loved looking at him. This was the child who would be the hero of my book." Upon winning the Caldecott Medal, Ezra said, “I can honestly say that Peter came into being because we wanted him; and I hope that, as the Scriptures say, ‘a little child shall lead them,’ and that he will show in his own way the wisdom of a pure heart.” ADD MORE ABOUT HIS BREAKTHROUGH AND INFLUENCE

Development

After years of illustrating books written by others, Keats found his own voice as an artist through The Snowy Day. Keats said, “I wanted The Snowy Day 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. Crunch...crunch...And the joy of being alive.” 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.” MORE ABOUT HIS PROCESS ON THIS BOOK

Peter appears, as protagonist or sidekick, in a total of seven books, as he grows and matures: Whistle for Willie, Peter's Chair, A Letter to Amy, Goggles!, Hi, Cat! and Pet Show!. THE FOLLOWING REFERS TO THE RANGE OF HIS WORK, NOT SNOWY DAY; As Keats evolved from fine artist to children's book illustrator, he applied influences and techniques that had inspired him as a painter, from Cubism to abstraction, within a cohesive, and often highly dramatic, narrative structure. His illustrations demonstrate an enormous emotional range, swinging from exuberant whimsy to deep desolation and back again.

Awards

It went on to receive the Caldecott Medal for the most distinguished picture book for children in 1963. ADD OTHER AWARDS