SOURCE CITATION
"Ezra Jack Keats." Major Authors and Illustrators for Children and Young Adults, 2nd ed., 8 vols. Gale Group, 2002. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale. 2007
BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY
Author and illustrator Ezra Jack Keats's numerous books for children often depict minority heroes who find a way to thrive in rough, inner-city neighborhoods. At a young age the characters learn to cope with the everyday realities of their specific environment, and even delight in the discovery of such universal events as a snowstorm and learning how to whistle. The stories are often geared toward small children up to the age of five. Blending opaque gouache with cut-out collage, Keats evolved a unique style of illustration that is both colorful and multitextured, his artwork combining with his skill as a writer to make him "one of the most influential creators of picture books in the twentieth century," according to an essayist in Juvenile Miscellany.
The youngest of three children born to Polish immigrants of Jewish descent, Keats changed his name from Katz two years after World War II out of concern that anti-Semitic prejudices would limit his ability to make a living. No stranger to tenement life, Keats was born and raised in a tough section of Brooklyn where his father supported the family by working as a waiter in Greenwich Village while his mother stayed home to raise Keats and his older brother and sister.
Even at the age of four, Keats showed an avid interest in art. Once he covered the kitchen tabletop with sketches of cottages and an assortment of children, a curly lashed lady, Chinese and Indian men, and other characters. Instead of reprimanding Keats for wrongdoing, his mother complimented him for creating such works of art. "So she got out the tablecloth which we used only on Friday nights and she covered the whole little mural and every time a neighbor would come in, she'd unveil it to show what I had done," Keats once recalled.
Because he had seen too many starving artists while working in Greenwich Village, Keats's father outwardly discouraged his son from pursuing a career in art. In response, Keats kept on painting, but hid his work. When his father would come home and smell paint fumes still in the air, he'd send Keats out to play sports with the other children. But one day, the older man brought home a new tube of paint and gave it to his son. Keats remembered his father telling him: "If you don't think artists starve, well, let me tell you. One man came in the other day and swapped me a tube of paint for a bowl of soup." The ostensible trade happened many times until the young artist caught on. When his father brought home a package of inexpensive brushes Keats knew no serious artist would purchase, it was clear that inwardly Keats's father was proud of his son's abilities, even though he was unable to outwardly show it.
At about the age of eight, Keats learned an invaluable lesson about life in his sometimes harsh and brutal New York neighborhood. Some of the bullies cornered him one day as he walked with some of his artwork tucked under an arm. He figured he was in big trouble as they grabbed the work from him and took a good look at it. However, as Keats recalled: "When they learned that I had done the painting, they began to treat me with great respect. From then on, when they'd see me, I'd be greeted with 'Hi, Doc!'" He discovered that a gentle-spirited child could survive and grow and be himself even in a hostile atmosphere, and he later shared that discovery in books.
Keats continued painting, and his first paid work came when he earned a quarter for creating a sign for a local candy store. This sale impressed Keats's father, who encouraged him to specialize in painting signs so he could get paid for his work. He then took the boy to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan to further inspire him with portraits of great men like George Washington by Gilbert Stuart. "It was all very nice and it was all really dull, and I was getting tired," the artist commented. "Suddenly I looked down the length of the corridor and at the other end was an arched doorway which opened to another gallery, completely bathed in sunlight. Framed in that archway was Daumier's 'Third Class Carriage.'" That experience saved the excursion.
It wasn't until his father died from a heart attack that Keats discovered just how proud he had been of his artistic son. The police had asked him to look through his father's wallet as part of the process of identifying the man. In Newbery and Caldecott Medal Books: 1956-1965, Esther Hautzig quoted Keats's reflections on the contents of his father's wallet: "I found myself staring deep into his secret feelings. 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."
Primarily self-taught, Keats won three scholarships to art school. However, because of the Depression he couldn't take advantage of those opportunities. Instead, the artist worked at whatever was available, including supporting his family on the dollar-per-day he earned by loading melons onto trucks. Eventually he was able to get back into art as a muralist for the Works Progress Administration (WPA). During World War II Keats joined the U.S. Air Corps, where he became an expert in camouflage. Following the war, he focused on illustration, landing an assignment for Collier's in 1947, then studying art in Paris for a year.
After returning to New York, Keats exhibited works at the Associated American Artists Gallery, which led to a commission from Doubleday to create book covers. Another editor admired Keats's work and hired him to illustrate children's books. In American Artist, Erma Perry quoted Keats as stating, "This was the real break. This was how I found my field, which fuses storytelling, children, and art."
The first book Keats illustrated, 1954's Jubilant for Sure, was exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and chosen as one of the fifty best children's books of the year. For about a decade, Keats continued to illustrate books by other writers. Then he decided to make some changes in the children's book industry. "There were two things that troubled me at that time," he explained in a Macmillan Publishers press release: "one was that in many of the manuscripts I was given there was a peculiar quality of contrivance and rigid structure; the other was that I never got a story about Black people." He made up his mind to start writing books, as well as illustrating them. The heroes would include black children having experiences, or what Keats termed a "happening." And he would tell each story as honestly as he could.
The Snowy Day was Keats's first solo effort, and it proved very successful. In the Milwaukee Journal, he discussed the main character, a young black boy named Peter: "I think that children look at Peter first of all as a child, who is like themselves in some ways whether they are boy or girl, black, brown or white, fat or skinny or what." Anita Moss pointed out in Juvenile Miscellany that Keats's "depictions of Black children at play in the inner city were ground-breaking, profoundly significant images." As the illustrator as well as writer of The Snowy Day, Keats experimented with crafting collages of brightly colored paper; his experiment represented a turning point in his creative style.
Five more books feature Peter, the protagonist growing up until the point where his creator decided he was too old. At this point, Peter's little sister Susie becomes a protagonist, along with Peter's friend Louie. Keats also introduced Hispanic characters named Archie, Roberto, and Clementina into his books. Because of this multicultural approach, Keats's books became popular not only in the United States, but abroad as well. In Japan, in fact, the translation of Skates! was such a hit that a roller-skating rink was named after him.
In a tribute to Keats in Horn Book, Selma G. Lanes wrote: "None of his best works are stories in the conventional sense, rather they are mood pieces--paeans to growing up in a big city. If the overall tone is vaguely melancholy--elegiac--there are grace notes of joy and hope: an electric squiggle of French blue on the hero's shirt, the glowing vermillion on his oversized cap, a passage of heartbreakingly mellow magenta, a backdrop of luscious blue-green." A writer in Juvenile Miscellany added that "Keats used his love of color and his curiosity for life around him to create some of the most expressive picture books of this century." Ironically, Keats's family could never afford to buy him picture books: he owned his first one at the age of thirty-five.
In 1983 the Ezra Jack Keats Foundation, funded by royalties from Keats's works, was formed to support humanitarian programs and provide scholarships, lectures, and literacy programs. The Foundation also presents the annual Ezra Jack Keats Medal to children for their artwork. The Ezra Jack Keats Award was also established, its goal to encourage writers with fewer than five books published. Pat Cummings, writing for School Library Journal, commented that "On the tenth anniversary of the Ezra Jack Keats Award, the artist's passion for art and compassion for people are still very much alive. Ezra Jack Keats may have written crackling and elegant prose, but his art was clearly what got him out of bed in the morning. Patterns and textures and nuanced figures don't dance like that if art isn't in your veins. . . . That Keats knew precisely what it took to deliver a cohesive, meaningful, positive, and artistic book makes the recognition of an illustrator all the more satisfying."
UPDATES
May 11, 2005: The 1983 stage production of Keats's book Captain Louis by Meridee Stein was updated by Anthony Stein and Stephen Schwartz for a musical produced in New York at the York Theater. Source: New York Times, www.nytimes.com, May 11, 2005.
PERSONAL INFORMATION
Born Jacob Ezra Katz, March 11, 1916, in Brooklyn, NY; son of Benjamin (a waiter) and Augusta (a homemaker; maiden name, Podgainy) Katz; name legally changed, 1951. Education: Attended Art Students League; studied painting under Jean Charlot. Memberships: PEN, Society of Illustrators, Authors Guild, Authors League of America.
CAREER
Author and illustrator of children's books. Muralist for Works Progress Administration (WPA) c. 1930s; instructor at School of Visual Arts, New York, NY, 1947-48, and Workshop School, New York, NY, 1955-57. Contributor of designs to UNICEF holiday cards. Set and costume designer for plays, including The Trip, produced in New York, NY 1983. Exhibitions: Associated American Artists Gallery, New York, NY, 1950, 1954. Military service: U.S. Air Corps, camouflage expert during World War II.
