Ezra Jack Keats, No Starving Artist
Wednesday, December 11, 2013 at 10:15PM 
A couple of weeks ago I took a week off regular blogging and reposted edited pieces from an old series of posts on author/illustrators of classic children’s literature. There’s one more, and it didn’t seem right to leave it languishing alone in the archives, so I’m reposting it today.
Ezra Jack Keats was 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 African-American children as main characters, but he would certainly be one of the first. Do you know Peter, the little boy of The Snow Day and other Ezra Jack Keats stories?
To us, Keats’ 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 in the early 1960s. The primary complaint was that the book contained stereotypical black characters. I don’t see it. Yes, 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 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 changed it after WWII because he was afraid anti-Semitism would keep him from succeeding 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 bought tubes of paint to bring home for his son, but told him he had received them from a starving artist in exchange 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. Later, he worked as an illustrator for Marvel Comics, and then, during WWII, in the military as a designer of camouflage patterns. Over his lifetime, 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 wrote and illustrated himself.
A sketch from A Letter to AmyWould you like to know a bit about how an Ezra Jack Keats book was put together? His illustrations, as you may know, were from mixed media collages. But making those finished pieces comes near the end of the book-building process. Keats started with sketches he arranged on the walls of his studio to help him determine the flow of the story. Then he did a storyboard containing sketches of every page of a book on one sheet of paper. (See a storyboard from Goggles!.)
From the dummy of A Letter to Amy
Next came 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 example on the left from A Letter to Amy.
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. The 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 images 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 glimpsing other people’s lives as I walk my neighbourhood at night. This illustration gives us a night time peek at 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.
Reader Comments (4)
This was one of my favourite books as a child.
I loved "The Snowy Day" as a child and it was one of the first books I bought for my children. I really enjoy reading it to them. I didn't know about his other books. I also didn't know anything about him, so I found your post very interesting.
We both loved this Rebecca! Ezra's dad was a wise man! We encourage young artists to make sure they have another profession and if their art happens to turn into a career they're one of the rare ones - only a very small percentage of artists, even those with college degrees in it, have been able to make a decent living at it - I can vouch for the feast or famine principle! - Funny the parallels too - Robert started as a sign painter - even still does them occasionally, but it's a lost art now due to computer sign printing. Then murals - and fine art.
Delightful story. Thanks!
I'm glad you both enjoyed this, Diane. And I love it that there are parallels to Robert's experience.