Ezra Jack Keats’s 1962 book The Snowy Day—about a Black boy who immerses himself in the magic of snowfall—remains a staple of children’s literature. In Ezra Jack Keats at Play in the World of Children’s Books, W. Nikola-Lisa, a renowned children’s book author himself, examines Keats’s lasting literary impact.
Before you were an author, you were a teacher. Could you discuss your attraction to children’s books and the role they played in your classroom?
I was very fortunate to teach primary school–aged children in an alternative school in Bozeman, Montana, my first two years after receiving my education degree. I did this because I had met the woman who ran the school while I was traveling through Montana, and I liked her idea of education, a loose fusion of Kodaly-Orff music training and Rudolf Steiner “artistic” education.
Part of being an alternative school meant that we didn’t have the resources for standard texts and other school materials, so off we went to the public library, where we cleared the shelves each week, using real literature to teach reading, writing, and the appreciation of good literature. The more I used literature, rather than manufactured reading materials, to teach reading and the language arts, the more I fell in love with picture books in particular: they were just so beautiful, both visually and textually, ranging in content from the whimsical to the serious.
What initially drew you to the work of Ezra Jack Keats? How did he change the landscape of children’s picture books?
My teaching career began in the late 1970s, when Ezra Jack Keats was producing some of his best work. He was not an obscure author-illustrator, since he had won the prestigious Caldecott Medal for The Snowy Day a decade earlier. Not only did he introduce readers to children of color—Peter, Archie, Roberto, Louie, and others—in both major and minor roles, but he also introduced readers to the dynamic and colorful world of collage, an art form that was really beginning to take off in children’s picture books during the ’70s and ’80s.
Do you feel that there’s a way to comprehend Keats’s personality through his art technique?
It would all be speculation. Ezra Jack Keats was a very private man, open and accessible to close friends, but awkwardly shy and somewhat aloof to others. When I was studying his holdings at the de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection at the University of Southern Mississippi, I came across a box with the most unusual contents: an undershirt decorated with the Superman insignia. The story is that a close friend of his gave this to Ezra before he accepted the Caldecott Medal because the friend knew that Ezra was very nervous about giving his acceptance speech—and what better way to gain resolve than to wear a Superman undershirt beneath your regular suit? To say that Ezra was shy or reserved might be a good guess, especially in unfamiliar company, but he also had a wicked, understated sense of humor.
Could you tell readers what you have come to understand about the relationship between the written word and illustration?
For most children’s picture books, the word comes first, and then the editor is tasked with the job of finding an illustrator who best complements the text, a challenge the editor rather enjoys—and sometimes takes too much credit for. The end goal is always the same: to create a book where the words and images work hand-in-hand in an equally balanced manner. But it’s an odd process, especially for the author, who, after handing off the manuscript to the editor, is shown the door so the “real” process can begin between the editor, artistic director, and illustrator. Basically, what I learned early on is that illustrators want what I want—to be left alone. That is, to unleash their creativity in the company of no one, to soar to heights unknown.
From your perspective, what makes picture books so powerful and enduring?
I think of that in the context of medieval bookmaking. For the most part, the lingua franca of medieval society was not text; it was imagery. It had to be—except for the priestly class, the population was illiterate. Communication of church teachings was done primarily through iconography. It’s also how children’s picture books work: children often first “read” a book by looking at the illustrations, memorizing “the story,” which enables them to “read” it back to the teacher, parent, or caregiver. At some point, the child connects with the text and then is able to read what is printed on the page. So, yes, we should revere the importance of images, especially images we present to children.
How does a children’s writer stay aware of the balance between reality and imagination when delivering a story?
The great Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget taught us that children develop through various stages of cognition, from simple object play to abstract thinking—the latter wholly dependent upon the former, which brings me to the second question, and to Ezra Jack Keats. I ended my book on Keats by suggesting that he had an open vein to childhood; it’s what kept him fresh, funny, and full of surprises in his writing and illustrating. Was he “aware” of the balance between reality and fantasy? I doubt it. In fact, the nature of the creative process is that it erases the line between the two, putting the creative person into a state of “flow,” a concept we learned from the late Hungarian-American psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Children’s book writers and illustrators come in all shapes and sizes, colors, and backgrounds, but one thing they share is an openness to the wonders of the world.
Marrissa Childs works as a freelance developmental editor and book reviewer in Arkansas.
