Ezra Jack Keats Was No Starving Artist
Tuesday, January 27, 2009 at 10:11PM 
Dorothy and Suzanne guessed last week’s mystery artist at exactly the same time. Yes, it was Ezra Jack Keats—the first author, some say, to write children’s picture books that take place in an urban setting.
I don’t know if he was the first one to give us picture books featuring black children as main characters, but he would certainly be one of the first. You know Peter, don’t you, the little boy of The Snow Day and other Ezra Jack Keats stories?
To us now, his Caldecott Award winning The Snowy Day seems like the most uncontroversial of children’s stories, but it wasn’t without critics when it was first published. The primary complaint was that the book had stereotyped black characters. I don’t see it, and the only thing I can see in this story that someone might consider stereotyping is that little Peter’s family lives in the inner city. But Ezra Jack Keats was born and raised in Brooklyn and lived there almost his whole life. He was simply using the setting that he knew best.
Ezra Jack Keats was born to Polish Jewish immigrants on March 11, 1916. His name at birth was Jacob Ezra Katz, but he would change it after WWII because he was afraid that anti-Semitism might keep him from being successful as an artist.
Young Jack was always drawing and his parents were very proud of his artwork, but his father was also concerned that he would need to learn another skill in order to earn an income. So Mr. Katz would buy tubes of paint to bring home for his son, but then tell him that he had received them from a “starving artist” in lieu of payment for a bowl of soup in the coffee shop where he worked. Later, Jack Keats said his father had been “[m]y 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.”
The photo from Life magazine that would be Keat’s inspiration for Peter.As it turns out, Daddy Katz needn’t have worried. Knowing how to draw and paint worked out well for Ezra Jack Keats. His first paid work was painting signs, and he went on to a job as a muralist for the WPA during the depression. After that he worked as an illustrator for Marvel Comics, and then, in the military during WWII, he worked as a designer of camouflage patterns. Over his life his resume would also include Reader’s Digest covers, illustrations for The New York Times Book Review and other magazines, greeting cards, posters, paintings sold in shop windows, and designs for the set of a musical. And of course, the children’s books, some that he illustrated for other authors, but many that he both wrote and illustrated himself.
A sketch from A Letter to AmyWould you like to know a little bit about how an Ezra Jack Keats book was put together? His illustrations, as you probably know, were from mixed media collages. But making those finished pieces comes near the end of the book-building process.
Jack Keats started with sketches that he arranged on the walls of his studio so that he could determine the flow of the story. Then he did a storyboard that contained sketches of every page of a book on one sheet of paper. (You can see an example from one of his storyboards—from Goggles!—here.)
From the dummy of A Letter to Amy
Next was the dummy—a model of the book showing what will be on each page of the final product. The illustrations in the dummy book could be very rough, like the one I used as the second clue in the mystery artist game.
The illustrations in the final book were done from reproductions of finished works of art made from various papers, fabrics, other interesting bits and pieces, and paint. This use of collage for illustration was considered innovative when Keats first began writing and illustrating children’s books. You might say he changed the face of children’s literature in more than one way.
I’ve included just a few of the products from the process of building an Ezra Jack Keats book, but you can see many more of them here at the Ezra Jack Keats Virtual Exhibit.
Let me show you one more illustration, one of my favorites, from his book Dreams.
I love getting glimpses of people’s lives as I walk my neighbourhood at night. This illustration gives us a night time glimpse of Keats’ neighbourhood. Ezra Jack Keats never married and never had children of his own, but you can tell from his books that he liked children and families, can’t you? I’d say he loved his neighbourhood as much as I love mine.
The strange little piece used as the first clue to the mystery artist game was done during Keats’ year studying art in Europe after the war.
Reader Comments (5)
AGHGHGHG! I can't believe I didn't get that. We love Ezra Jack Keats. My children adore his books. Uugh. LOL. What fun we had trying to figure it out though.
Cool Birthday! (Just the month and day, not the year)
That is a great book. It's nice to know more about Keats.
Thanks for sharing that.
I love Peter the little boy,the snowy day and whistle for willie are my favorite since I was a child!!!
A Snowy Day, my favorite from reading to my Dgtr who is now 37.
Just had a copy sent to someone with a newborn.
My dgtr purchased the postal stamps, YAAY!!!