The Art & The Story, with Callie Feyen

Caldecott Review: "The Snowy Day"

Hello, Poetry Friend

My husband texted me a photo of a painting that is a mosaic of small paintings, each square done by a student at St. Mary’s School. The painting is of St. Mary’s Catholic Church, my church home.

“Zoom in and look close,” John texted.

“Is that a crow?” I replied.

“I don’t see the bird,” he said.

Do you see it?

I always see the bird. Or the strange detail in the corner. Or the shift in color. Careful reading teaches careful seeing.

When I take time with a picture book, I can see how the art cooperates with the words to tell the story. I first learned to do this in college, in a children’s literature class.

One of our assignments was to take a picture book which had been in print for at least twenty-fve years and write about why it endures. I chose The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats, which won the Caldecott Medal in 1963. The book has now been in print for more than sixty years.

There are two art things I love about the art in Keats’ book.

One is that the snow is not always white. It sometimes has pink and blue and green and purple splashes and smudges. This is city snow. At the end of the story, after Peter goes outside with his friend, the snowflakes take on rainbow colors.

The second is the quietness of the pictures. We see Peter look at his own footprints. We see him sit in a bath and think. We see him sleep. His peace is riveting.

The Caldecott Medal honors art in children’s literature, and art is something I am becoming better acquainted with, especially since my Crossroads poetry and painting show with Nan Henke. The words in a Caldecott-winner tend to be fewer, so even if the text isn’t exactly poetry, it’s sparse and precise, the way poetry is.

The Caldecott Medal was awarded this week to Big by Vashti Harrison. For the next month Callie Feyen (who’s always up for some writing play) and I will read and discuss this book and a few of the others that were considered. Join Callie and me each Tuesday in February, both at Tell Me A Story That’s True and here at Poetry for Life.

Because children’s books have their own immortality, like a snowball that never melts.

Happy poeming!

Megan