Touchstone Book -The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats

Keats, E. (1962). The Snowy Day. New York, New York: Penguin Young Readers Group

This book is a Touchstone classic picture book. This book is ideal for Kindergarten,1st, 2nd and 3rd graders.

I really enjoyed the illustrations throughout the book. They are very unique and colorful, which I think students would like. The pictures are very simple, but convey the story well. Ezra Jack Keats used several different textures in his illustrations that give more depth and dimension. I also found it interesting that the depiction of snow had many different colors included in the pictures. There was green, blue, pink and purple splashes with the white. This gave the snow a more whimsical look.

 I  liked that the author tied the text and the illustrations together in certain areas. There were two sentences that that ended in "like this:" and "like that:" where the illustration showed footprints in different directions. It is important for authors to tie the text and the pictures together for children to relate to. The plot is very relatable for students, because the activities Peter does in the story may be ones they have done in the snow before. However, the setting is very subjective because if a child has never seen or played in snow before, they probably would not relate or understand the story very well.

The Snowy Day provides a great relationship between illustration and text. A lesson for a kindergarten class can follow the Common Core standard of "With prompting and support, describe the relationship between illustrations and the story in which they appear (e.g., what moment in a story an illustration depicts)."  The lesson objective would be for students to be able to describe how the author connects illustrations and the story and then create their own story and illustration. I will ask the class three questions: what their favorite illustration is? How does that picture go with the story? Would you have drawn the picture differently?

I will use this website http://www.ezra-jack-keats.org/fun-games/the-snowy-day-read-aloud/, Ezra Jack Keats actual webpage, to show an animated, read-aloud version of the story. This will give the students another opportunity to hear and see, with moving pictures the story. I can play this song to inspire my students on what they can write their story on about snow.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuMt_NDOaxQ . My students will then create their Snowy Day activity story. This will be one to two sentences describing what activity they have done or would like to do in the snow(ex: build a snowman or go sledding). The students will then draw a picture of themselves doing the activity on the same paper, just as Keats does in the story. An additional resource for this lesson would be to add vocabulary with this list  http://pearsonfoundation.org/downloads/2010rft/RFTR2010_Lexile_Vocabulary_Activities.pdf  to have the students incorporate at least one word from the list into their story.