The snowy day peter
'A Poem For Peter' Recalls One Unforgettable 'Snowy Day' : NPR
'A Poem For Peter' Recalls One Unforgettable 'Snowy Day' In 1962, Peter — an African-American boy exploring his neighborhood after a snowstorm — broke the color barrier in mainstream children's publishing. A new book pays tribute to author Ezra Jack Keats.
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'A Poem For Peter' Recalls One Unforgettable 'Snowy Day'
In A Poem for Peter, Andrea Davis Pinkney introduces young readers to Ezra Jack Keats, the author and illustrator behind The Snowy Day. The story begins with Keats' parents fleeing Warsaw, seeking a better life in the United States. It is illustrated by Lou Fancher and Steve Johnson. Lou Fancher and Steve Johnson/Penguin Random House hide caption
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Lou Fancher and Steve Johnson/Penguin Random House
Author Andrea Davis Pinkney used to sleep with a copy of The Snowy Day. "I loved that book — it was like a pillow to me," she says.
More than 50 years ago, Peter — an African-American boy exploring his neighborhood after a snowstorm — broke the color barrier in mainstream children's publishing. The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats would go on to win a Caldecott Medal. Now, Pinkney pays homage to Keats in a new book called A Poem for Peter, and there is an animated, Snowy Day special streaming on Amazon.
When Pinkney was asked to write a book about Keats, she says she jumped at the chance "like a kid on a sled." The Snowy Day was her favorite book as a child; she says it brought her comfort to see her own life reflected on the page.
"Up to that point, there were many picture books but they were in rural settings," she says. "And here was this book that made my life, my experience, valid. City streets, sidewalks, stoops — everything that I held so dear."
As she worked on the biography, Pinkney learned that Keats was also a city kid, the child of immigrants who fled anti-Semitism in Poland.
As a child, Keats wanted to become an artist, but his father died when he was a teen, World War II broke out, and his dreams were put on hold. After serving in the Army, Keats returned to face discrimination at home.
"He could not find a job," Pinkney says. "There were literally signs in windows that said: 'Jews need not apply.' Ezra was born with the name Jacob (Jack) Ezra Katz. When he saw those signs, he changed his name to Ezra Jack Keats."
With each tube of colored oil, / Ezra let his imagination grow. / And he drew, oh, how he drew. Lou Fancher and Steve Johnson/Penguin Random House hide caption
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Lou Fancher and Steve Johnson/Penguin Random House
Eventually, Keats landed a job as an illustrator.
At some point he saw a series of photos of a young, black boy in Life magazine. He held on to those pictures for 20 years.
"And then he gets an invitation to create his own children's book," Pinkney explains. "And he said: This is the boy I am going to use as the star."
And that's how Peter was born. With its beautiful illustrations and sweet story, The Snowy Day was an instant hit. But there was also a backlash because Keats was white.
"Ezra was criticized for presuming to be able to write about a black child," explains Deborah Pope, executive director of The Ezra Jack Keats Foundation. But Keats had a simple response. He said he put black characters into his books "because they're there," Pope says. Keats felt they'd "always been there, but we've never seen them — we need to see them."
That need still exists, Pinkney says, "We need more Peters. We need more stories that are universal in nature ... that appeal to all children just because of their beauty, and whimsy, and fun and discovery.
"
In her new book, Pinkney introduces Peter — and the man who created him — to a new generation of young readers:
Like a snowflake you fell,
right into our hearts.
You arrived.
A little Snowy Day surprise!
Like a crystal flake from the clouds,
you fluttered down
with your own one-of-a-kind
cutie-beauty.
Peter and Ezra, / you made a great team. / Together you brought a snowstorm / of your dreams. Lou Fancher and Steve Johnson/Penguin Random House hide caption
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Lou Fancher and Steve Johnson/Penguin Random House
Peter and Ezra, / you made a great team. / Together you brought a snowstorm / of your dreams.
Lou Fancher and Steve Johnson/Penguin Random House
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Why Generations of Children Love 'The Snowy Day'
Family
Ezra Jack Keats’s picture book is the most checked-out volume of all time at the New York Public Library. A professor of children’s literature examines why the book has connected with so many kids.
By Michelle H. MartinCOURTESY OF THE EZRA JACK KEATS FOUNDATIONKids and families love Ezra Jack Keats’s The Snowy Day so much that they’ve checked it out of the New York Public Library system more than any other book in the NYPL’s 125 years of existence—485,583 times since it was published in 1962. That’s more than The Cat in the Hat, Where the Wild Things Are, Charlotte’s Web, and even Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.
What makes this quiet picture book so well loved?
For starters, there’s something inherently magical about a snowy day. Whether you live in a place where it always snows or a place where it rarely snows, the idea of winter’s first snowfall brings delight and anticipation. When there’s enough snow to slow everything and everyone down, it might mean stress and work for the adults, but for most kids, it’s time to go out and play.
The cover of The Snowy Day features the main character, Peter, swathed from head to toe in his red snowsuit, dwarfed by undulating mounds of snow. Even before readers crack the book open, they know that more than enough of the white stuff has fallen for snow angels, snowmen, snowball fights, and, of course, footprints with your toes pointed out “like this” and with your toes pointed in “like that.” Readers sense Peter’s unbridled joy as he engages in all these activities; he is so enamored of the snow that he tucks a snowball into his pocket before he goes inside, hoping to save it for later.
Keats’s vibrant collage illustrations bring this simple plot to life. They include checkered oilcloth used for lining cabinets to make the mother’s dress, marbleized paper, gum erasers for snowflakes, watercolor for bubbles, splatter painting with India ink, and more. Keats cut pieces of beautiful paper from all around the world—Sweden, Japan, Italy—and glued them together to make images worth looking at over and over again. Reynold Ruffins, one of Keats’s artistic contemporaries and a fellow picture-book artist, wrote in an anthology of Keats’s work that Keats would spend days pondering different hand-dipped papers, trying to choose the right one for an image he was composing.
An illustration from The Snowy Day (Courtesy of The Ezra Jack Keats Foundation)Keats departs from realism in his portrayal of the snow in The Snowy Day, but this departure paradoxically makes the story ring more true. The illustration in which Peter and his buddy walk into the “deep, deep snow” might feel like an exaggeration because of the height of the mounds on either side of them, but when you’re as small as Peter is, perhaps the mountains of snow feel as big as they look on that last page of the story.
Keats effectively illustrates a child’s-eye view.
The Snowy Day is famous for being the first book featuring an African American child to win the Caldecott Medal for excellence in children’s picture books. African American children had certainly appeared in picture books prior, but the high-profile nature of the Caldecott Medal means that the book still has wide distribution, outlasting many of its contemporaries. To this day, nearly every American library that houses children’s books buys at least one copy of The Snowy Day, making it widely available to young American readers everywhere.This book not only cleared a path for Keats to illustrate in many more books the children of color with whom he grew up in Brooklyn, but through Peter, it gave those children a window into their own lives: a kid who looked like them, who loved to play in the snow, too.
If I like the work of an author or illustrator, and I discover that the artist is also a likable person, I appreciate their work more.
Maybe the children who have made The Snowy Day the most checked-out book of the New York Public Library system would like to know that Keats cherished the feedback he received from his readers and wrote back to them. According to Anita Silvey in her introduction to the Keats anthology, he often quoted his favorite letter from a kid who wrote, “We like you because you have the mind of a child.” Susan Hirschman, Keats’s longtime editor, said that he agonized over the mistakes he made in his early picture books. When a child pointed out that a guinea pig’s tail in Millicent Selsam’s How Animals Sleep (1968), which Keats illustrated, was actually the tail of a rat (naked rather than hairy, as it should be), he wrote letters of apology to both the mother and the child. Knowing this gives me an even greater appreciation for the craft and care with which Keats created The Snowy Day.
As a black child growing up in the late 1960s and early ’70s, I had few books with kids who looked like me, even though my parents were educators and my maternal grandmother, who taught kindergarten at an all-black elementary school, handed down her old classroom-library books to my brother and me.
Peter was there for me, though, and he stuck around for my daughter, born in 2003, who has enjoyed him as much as I. Now 16, my daughter is still as fascinated with snow as she was at 3 and 4, and Peter might be partly responsible for that. Keats made Peter’s world so inviting that it beckons us. Perhaps the busyness of daily life in the 21st century makes us appreciate Peter even more—a kid who has the luxury of a whole day to just be outside, surrounded by snow that’s begging to be enjoyed.
One snowy day in St. Petersburg (39 photos - St. Petersburg, Russia)
Russia Saint Petersburg city > One snowy day in St. Petersburg (39 Photos)
Author: Van
Saturday, January 26, was snowy in St. Petersburg. Arriving in the afternoon and checking into the hotel, I decided to warm up a bit and take a walk. The walk, despite the weather, lasted for several hours.
The city was preparing the next day to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the lifting of the blockade of Leningrad. I did not want to shoot anything, but still I could not resist and took a few photos "for memory".
Anichkov bridge. SPb
Klodt - "Conquest of the horse by man."
Vodnichy leans on one knee,
gripping the bridle with both hands,
stops the horse.
Anichkov bridge. SPb
Klodt - "Conquest of the horse by man."
The animal is obedient to man,
on the hooves of a horseshoe, instead of a saddle, a skin.
Fontanka from Anichkov bridge. SPb
in winter, people have the opportunity to significantly shorten their path ...
Nevsky prospect 41. St. Petersburg
St. Petersburg SOSULI and the fight against them (with varying success)
"Every year Petersburgers die and end up in hospitals because of falling icicles."
from fresh:
SAINT PETERSBURG, February 1, 2019, 12:08, FederalPress.
Woman got a concussion
I got the impression that all the forces of St. Petersburg communal services are thrown onto the city roofs, I have not seen such poorly cleaned streets for a long time. Ice build-ups on the sidewalks (even on the Nevsky Prospekt) pass by pedestrians with Nordic calm...
And children, they are children in Africa too. They are attracted by the dolls moving in the window.
Showcase Eliseevsky. St. Petersburg
Nevsky prospect (28) St. Petersburg
despite the winter, there are people who prefer to move around the city on bicycles.
more often they are deliveries of orders, but there were also several cyclists in thermal suits.
On the eve of the 75th anniversary of the complete liberation of Leningrad from the fascist blockade, Smolny installed functioning copies of blockade loudspeakers in the Central District.
"In the first months of the blockade, 1,500 loudspeakers were installed on the streets of the city.
The loudspeakers were reinforced in such a way that the passer-by was continuously in the zone of their sound: one speaker “escorted” the pedestrian, the other immediately “greeted” him. The metronome sounded between transmissions and alerts. According to him, the inhabitants learned the situation in the city. If the radio pulse is normal - 60 beats per minute: everything is calm in the city, if it is fast - bombing or shelling is approaching.0013 / from here http://piter.my/event/634343/
Blockade loudspeakers. Nevsky prospect 54. St. Petersburg
Kazan Cathedral. SPb
the birds of God are flying...
but "low, low," as Comrade Ensign said about crocodiles.
Mikhail Illarionovich in the snow. St. Petersburg
Monument to M.B. Barclay de Tolly. St. Petersburg
Wash from the Green Bridge. SPb
just a river and just a St. Petersburg bridge
Museum of Illusions. Bolshaya Morskaya street 5.
St. Petersburg
"Sail on the Titanic, find yourself among giant toys or escape from zombies..." - no one is in sight, despite the Saturday.
Arch of the General Staff Building and the Church of the Savior Not Made by Hands in the Winter Palace. SPb
"Church of the Savior Not Made by Hands in the Winter Palace on December 9, 2014, after many years, is open to visitors. This event was timed to coincide with the 250th anniversary of the State Hermitage. Restoration work has been going on since 2008. "
/ from here http://mitropolia.spb.ru/news/culture/?id=62894
Palace Square. SPb
All the "fuss" with the preparations for the Seventy-fifth anniversary is behind me.
Angel of the Alexander Column. St. Petersburg
Inner courtyard of the Winter Palace. SPb
Snowdrifts (small)
Inner courtyard of the Winter Palace. SPb
The queue to the museum was short.
Twenty minutes of waiting with the munus of eight amused himself by looking at the statues on the roof.
Inner courtyard of the Winter Palace. St. Petersburg
Petropavlovka from the window of the Hermitage. SPb
"Evening is blue, very blue,
Dropped down on me.
Bright colors, clear lines
The world was covered with a veil. "
/ Pavel Bashlykov (tsy)
Vasilievsky from the window of the Hermitage. St. Petersburg
Inner courtyard of the Winter Palace. SPb
(January snowdrifts)
Isakiy from Palace Square. SPb
(during snowfall)
Palace Square. St. Petersburg
Wash from the Green Bridge. SPb
"just a river" when it got dark
Church of Saints Peter and Paul. Nevsky 22-24. St. Petersburg
Kazan Cathedral. St. Petersburg
Monument to Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin on Arts Square.
St. Petersburg
Malaya Sadovaya street. St. Petersburg
Italian street 12. St. Petersburg
Project "Street of Life"
From January 25 to 27, the Street of Life project will be launched on Malaya Sadovaya Street, Manezhnaya Square and Italianskaya Street, which will enable residents and guests of St. Petersburg to touch the "realities of the blockade".
Italian street 25. St. Petersburg
" Manezhnaya Square and Italianskaya Street will become an open-air Museum, which will be used for guided tours. "
/ from here https://piterzavtra.ru/blokada-spb/
... I got the impression that the streets were not cleaned to give the City a "blockade authenticity" .....
Italian street 25. St. Petersburg
"War" "Blockade" "Victims" - only words
no reason to refuse to take a selfie for many of our people
Manezhnaya Square. SPb
.
.. the square is not crowded
Manezhnaya Square. SPb
TEREMOK under camouflage net
queue for pancakes
(nothing stimulates appetite like a walk in the fresh air)
Manezhnaya Square. SPb
" For the team of the Leningrad Theater of Musical Comedy, the blockade became not only a severe test, but also an unprecedented milestone in their creative biography. The Leningrad musical comedy, the only one of all the city theaters, was left by special order in the besieged city in order to maintain the spirit of Leningraders with its light, cheerful art.
Every year, veterans and front-line soldiers gather on memorable days in the theater hall at 13 Italianskaya Street, which, alas, are less and less every year, home front workers and children of the war, as well as their children and grandchildren, who know about the horrors of wartime firsthand.
Entrance: free
Address: Italian street, 13 "
/ from here https://piterzavtra.
ru/blokada-spb/
"Siege hole" (Days of blockade) - a memorial sign in St. Petersburg on the descent of the Fontanka River embankment near house 21, at the place where during the years of the blockade there was an ice hole, to which the inhabitants of the besieged city went for water.
The inscription is carved on the stone:
« Here
from icy
ice hole
took water
residents
besieged
Leningrad »
The memorial sign was opened on January 21, 2001
Fontanka. SPb
Anichkov bridge from the ice of the river
Fontanka. SPb
Belinsky bridge from the ice of the river
Fontanka Ice
water on top of ice near the pier near the National Library of Russia
(embankment of the Fontanka River, 36)
Fontanka Ice
someone trampled the word "SPARTAK" in the snow
why? why here? .
.. and now? wasn't it lazy?
I don't understand these people!
Publication date: 02/03/19
1.
karlione 02/04/19 10:02:49
this gallery is somewhat more meaningful than many from the author, there are really good shots inscribed in a certain concept (even two can be traced). however, framing still raises questions, and there is too much.
2.
Van 02/04/19 12:05:55
to karlione
I have asked you many times already.
I'll try to convey the message differently:
- dear karlione, better go teach your wife how to cook cabbage soup
;-)
3.
elena.shustrova 04.02.19 20:16:25
Van, you are just a hero - to walk through our uncleaned streets all day, and take so many photos! Indeed, this year something is going wrong under our feet. And in the photo the snow looks very photogenic))
4.
Van 02/05/19 15:15:53
to elena.
shustrova
"just a hero" - probably too much ....
(during my youth I had to walk up to forty km a day)
and when moving around your favorite city - only a matter of timely choice of "recreation places"
py.sy. on the second day he adapted and "samurai running" on the ice already gave odds to the natives ;-)
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The first snowy day showed the complete unpreparedness of St. Petersburg for winter Source: TG-channel "Kupchino News 🇷🇺 Z"
St. Petersburg will remember last Sunday with many accidents and streets not cleared of snow. The number of incidents on the roads allows us to state that the city administration, headed by Alexander Beglov did not cope with the organization of work on the timely cleaning of the streets.
On November 6, snow fell for the first time in the northern capital, which was warned by weather forecasters the day before.
Traffic jams in certain parts of the city, as well as multiple traffic accidents, have become the result of the passivity of structures subordinate to the Committee for Improvement.
The situation on the roads can be considered the most obvious marker of the unsatisfactory work of public utilities. Our editors have studied the community "accident and emergency | Petersburg” and found that literally from the very morning, when snowfall hit the northern capital, there were several points with accidents on the map.
The largest incident took place on the Moscow Highway. According to an eyewitness, at least 10 cars collided, as a result of which a traffic jam formed on the site.
Screenshot from the VK group “Accident and emergency | St. Petersburg»
Another accident occurred in the Primorsky district. Eyewitnesses reported that the car crashed into a tram. The exact cause of the accident is unknown, but it can be assumed that the driver lost control and, most likely, "did not enter" the turn.
Screenshot from the VK group “Accident and emergency | St. Petersburg»
Another accident happened on the Shafirovsky overpass. The footage shows that the movement is on a snow-covered road. One of the cars tried to rebuild, but "hit" another. The city's media have already dubbed this Sunday "tinsmith's day," an informal "holiday" for bodybuilders, celebrated primarily during the first days of snowfall.
Screenshot from the VK group “Accident and emergency | St. Petersburg"
Toward evening, the snow stopped and the city naturally “cleared” of precipitation. But the merits of public utilities are not here - during the day, the media repeatedly reported about the lack of the required amount of cleaning equipment and janitors on the streets. This is precisely the result of the fact that the city was covered with a layer of snow.
Over the past years, St. Petersburg has been forced to face the consequences of the so-called “communal collapse”.
