The Snowy Day
By Esther Ehrlich,
Common Sense Media Reviewer
Common Sense Media Reviewers
Classic captures a kid's delight in freshly fallen snow.
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Based on 5 parent reviews
Really funny but super edgy
What's the Story?
A young boy wakes to a world of freshly fallen snow and goes exploring throughout the cityscape in this gentle, glistening classic. With bold text and whimsical collages, Ezra Jack Keats captures the delight kids feel in the simplest pleasures.
Is It Any Good?
THE SNOWY DAY challenges the assumption that more is better, inviting you and your kids into a world of slow, easy pleasures. Ezra Keats is remarkable in his ability to create a calming yet vibrant story, striking this balance gracefully in pictures and in text. His artwork is spare yet the pictures burst with brilliant color and expression. In many of the pictures, Peter lacks facial features except his eyes, but Keats manages, with the angle of his head and the composition, to convey feeling.
The text, similarly economical, is made up of just enough words to tell the story -- none of them too hard for a young reader to sound out or for a young listener to understand -- and they are vivid words used powerfully, often rhyming or repeating. The result is that kids (and parents too!) can settle into Peter's snowy world. A bonus in this sparkling story is the African-American main character -- an all-too-rare occurrence, still, in children's literature.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about the pleasures of different types of weather: snowy days, rainy days, windy days, and more. Which is your favorite type of weather? Why?
How easy is it to create fun by yourself? Is it sometimes as much or more fun than playing with others?
Book Details
- Author: Ezra Jack Keats
- Illustrator: Ezra Jack Keats
- Genre: Picture Book
- Book type: Fiction
- Publisher: Penguin Group
- Publication date: November 1, 1962
- Publisher's recommended age(s): 2 - 4
- Number of pages: 38
- Award: Caldecott Medal and Honors
- Last updated: November 4, 2019
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