A biography about ezra jack keats
The first in-depth biography of one of the most influential authors of children's literature
Winner of the Adult Nonfiction Award from the Mississippi Library Association
Becoming Ezra Jack Keats offers the first complete biography of acclaimed children’s author and illustrator Ezra Jack Keats (–) intended for adult readers. Drawing extensively from his unpublished autobiography and letters, Becoming Ezra Jack Keats covers the breadth of Keats’s life, taking readers through his early years as the child of immigrant parents, his introduction to illustration and writing, and the full arc of his remarkable career.
Beyond a standard biography, this volume presents a time capsule of the political, social, and economic issues evolving during the span of Keats’s lifetime. It also addresses his trailblazing commitment to representation and diversity, most notably in his work The Snowy Day, which won the Caldecott Medal as the first full-color picture book to feature a Black child as the protagonist. Keats far surpassed his father’s prediction that he would be a starving artist. Instead, as shown in Becoming Ezra Jack Keats, he is now regarded as one of the most influential figures in children’s literature, having published twenty-two books translated into sixteen languages, all featuring the diversity he saw in the children outside the window of his Brooklyn studio.
"Virginia McGee Butler has created a valuable illumination of Ezra Jack Keats's life, particularly his childhood and young adulthood. The portrait of the artist is vivid, as is the re-creation of the time and place in which Keats lived and created."
- Paul V. Allen, author of I Can Read It All by Myself: The Beginner Books Story
"This loving portrait of Keats tells the story of his life as seen through his own eyes."
- Deborah Pope, executive director of the Ezra Jack Keats Foundation
"You will laugh. You will cry. You will fall in love with warm-hearted Ezr
The Wisdom of a Pure Heart: A Short Biography of Ezra Jack Keats
In , a young illustrator saw a series of photographs in Life magazine from Liberty County, Georgia. The photographer captured the day a state health officer visited a school to test the students for malaria. The little boy pictured looks hesitant, holds his hands out, and eventually cries from the pain of the blood test.
Though they captured just a passing moment in one little boy&#;s life, the illustrator cut out the line of photos and hung them up on his wall. He would keep them there for two decades. Eventually, the little boy in the photos would become the main character of this illustrator’s most famous work: The Snowy Day. Taking us along on a walk through the snow, Peter would crunch-crunch-crunch his way into readers’ hearts.
The illustrator&#;s name was Ezra Jack Keats, and he would go on to write a series of six books centered around little Peter, his character inspired by the boy in the Life magazine photographs. Peter would grow up and have a dog named Willie in Whistle for Willie. He and his friend Archie would struggle to find a pet to enter in the neighborhood Pet Show.
Ezra Jack Keats was born Jacob Ezra Katz in Brooklyn, NY on March 11, His parents had landed in New York after having fled anti-semitism in their native Poland. Growing up in the Jewish quarter of Brooklyn, Ezra loved frequenting the Brooklyn Public Library, especially the Reference Room. There, he enjoyed learning about all the magic of the world: plants, insects, art history, and geography, among other topics.
He began painting as a small child, partly supported by his father’s exchange of coffee shop tips for tubes of paint for his son. Ezra would have his first paying art assignment when he was just eight years old: painting signs for a local store. He was in third grade at PS at the time.
As he grew, Ezra’s talent began to flourish. As a high schooler, he would paint the award-winning
When did ezra jack keats die
Ezra Jack Keats
American children's writer and illustrator
Ezra Jack Keats (né Jacob Ezra Katz; March 11, - May 6, ) was an American writer and illustrator of children's books. He is best known for The Snowy Day, which won the Caldecott Medal and is considered one of the most important American books of the 20th century. He wrote 22 books and illustrated at least 70 more in his signature collage art style. Keats is known for introducing multiculturalism into mainstream American children's literature. Keats' works have been translated into some 20 languages, including Japanese, French, Danish, Norwegian, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Turkish, German, Swedish, Thai, Chinese, and Korean.
Early life
Jack Keats was born Jacob Ezra Katz on March 11, , to a poor family in East New York, Brooklyn, the third child of Polish-Jewish immigrants Benjamin Katz and Augusta Podgainy. Jack made pictures out of whatever scraps of wood, cloth and paper that he could collect. Benjamin Katz, who worked as a waiter, discouraged his son's artistic tendencies and insisted that artists lived terrible, impoverished lives. Nevertheless, Jack sometimes brought home tubes of paint, claiming, "A starving artist swapped this for a bowl of soup."
Keats learned about art at the library and school. When he graduated from Junior High School , he received a medal for drawing that he kept his entire life. 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 , 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, "There in his wallet were worn and tattered newspaper clippings of the notices of the awards I had
Ezra jack keats quotes Ezra&#;s Bio
A Young Artist
Ezra Jack Keats was born on March 11, in the East New York section of Brooklyn. He was the third child of Benjamin Katz and Augusta “Gussie” Podgainy, Polish Jews who came to this country to escape the aggressive anti-semitism in Europe. Ezra’s mother, as well as his older siblings, William and Mae, were all artistically gifted, but early on it was clear that making art was Ezra’s special gift, as well as joy.
Ezra’s teachers and school librarians gave him the encouragement he needed to believe in his talent. When he graduated from Junior High School he was awarded a medal for drawing and at Thomas Jefferson High School, he won a national Scholastic Award for his painting of a few hobos warming themselves around a fire. These awards also gave him “fuel” to believe in himself and they were still among his treasured possessions when he died.
Ezra’s family had always been poor but during the Great Depression of the s, many, including the Katz family, suffered even greater hardships. Although Ezra’s mother was supportive of his talent, his father worried that Ezra wouldn’t be able to earn a living. Nevertheless, Benjamin, who worked as a waiter, still brought home tubes of paint, pretending he had traded them with penniless artists for food.
Tragically, Benjamin died of a heart attack the day before Ezra’s high school graduation, at which he was to be awarded the senior class medal for excellence in art. Ezra had to identify the body, and in an interview with his friend, the poet Lee Bennett Hopkins, he said: “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.”
Out in the World
Ezra received three art school scholarships after high school, but instead he worked to help support his family and took art classes wheneve