Overall, the acclaim for The Snowy Day has far outweighed the criticism. Nevertheless, in the publication that lodged this criticism against the book, there was also a recommendation for The Snowy Day in a section of book reviews. In other words, the Council felt that Keats's character could just as easily have been white, so while it was nice to see a black face, the book did little to raise social consciousness.
When faced with that charge, Keats allegedly replied, "How can you put a color on a child's experience in the snow?"Īnd a few years after the book's publication, the Council on Interracial Books for Children criticized Keats for portraying a black character without any cultural context. Some people critical of the book suggested it was presumptuous for a Jewish man to write about the experience of African American child. While the book received critical acclaim right away, both for its artistic cut-paper collage approach to illustration and for featuring, without fanfare, a child of color, it also stirred up a bit of controversy. As Keats put it, "My book would have him there simply because he should have been there all along." According to Keats, the choice of Peter, an African American child, as the book's protagonist wasn't an attempt to make a point or advance a cause. It was a seemingly bold move, and yet it was really the sense of wonderment that Keats was focused on.
Published in 1962, the same year that the first black student was admitted to the University of Mississippi, The Snowy Day was the first mainstream children's book to feature an African American child as its hero. And yet, the way in which Keats chose to illustrate this seemingly straightforward story made it anything but simple. A child wakes up to a world blanketed in white and spends the next several hours exploring the magic that is a snow day: making tracks in the snow, sliding down hills, making snow angels, building snowmen, and coming home to a warm house. The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats is about something everyone has experienced: the wonderment of youth. To say The Snowy Day is a simple story about a simple boy would be, well…an oversimplification.
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