A Poem for Peter

A Poem for Peter

by Andrea Davis Pinkney

Published by:Viking Books for Young Readers

Published Date: November 2016

Goodread Summary:
The story of The Snowy Day begins more than one hundred years ago, when Ezra Jack Keats was born in Brooklyn, N.Y. The family were struggling Polish immigrants, and despite Keats’s obvious talent, his father worried that Ezra’s dream of being an artist was an unrealistic one. But Ezra was determined. By high school he was winning prizes and scholarships. Later, jobs followed with the WPA and Marvel comics. But it was many years before Keats’s greatest dream was realized and he had the opportunity to write and illustrate his own book.

For more than two decades, Ezra had kept pinned to his wall a series of photographs of an adorable African American child. In Keats’s hands, the boy morphed into Peter, a boy in a red snowsuit, out enjoying the pristine snow; the book became The Snowy Day, winner of the Caldecott Medal, the first mainstream book to feature an African American child. It was also the first of many books featuring Peter and the children of his — and Keats’s — neighborhood.

Andrea David Pinkney’s lyrical narrative tells the inspiring story of a boy who pursued a dream, and who, in turn, inspired generations of other dreamers.

My Review:
I've been waiting for this one!  It did not disappoint  and it is one of my favorites of the year!  
I love picture book author biographies of childhood book-friends! Thank you to Ezra Jack Keats for his persistence in the arts, to Andrea Pinkney for creating a wonderful collage of Keats and Peter, and to Peter for being such a good childhood book-friend.