An Ordinary Day

I have always loved this book. First,it is a most simple story. Like many good children’s books, if you write the text on paper, you will find there is just one lovely paragraph about a little boy who wakes up to a snowy day, goes outside and plays all day, and comes home to his warm house and loving mama. It is as profound as it is simple, because through one day the child has the experience of joy, adventure, fear, courage,disappointment, love and safety.. All the things that happen in his day are the things that might happen in any child's day.

 

The simplicity of the story makes this book a wonderful guide for second language students from all parts of the world to realize the magic in writing and sharing their own ordinary day stories. .. I have learned about a child in India who set paper boats down a stream ,..a child in Vietnam who rode a water buffalo to the rice fields..a child in China who looked at the window in his schoolroom and longed to climb out and run away. To tell a story that speaks to readers everywhere, you do not need a complex vocabulary. You only need a handful of words and a truthful heart.

 

There are other important things to know about Ezra Jack Keats and this story. (there is wonderful information about this at the Ezra Keats Foundation website https://www.ejkf.org/ezras-bio/ ) He was the child of Polish immigrants and English was not his family’s first language. He was also the first American children’s writer to have the protagonist be an African American child. Perhaps he knew deeply the experience of being the “other”. His father, a street cleaner, discouraged his young son’s affinity for art for fear that he would not be able to make a living. It wasn’t until he died on the street and his son went to identify his body that he found, in his father’s wallet, every newspaper clipping of his son’s art awards.

 

There are layers in Keats' story about courage.. courage to be himself in spite of what he thought his father wanted for him (not knowing his father’s heartbreaking pride in him); courage to risk the censorship of a society that may not be ready for change; courage to see the beauty and universality of one’s own story .

 

We can learn much from Ezra Jack Keats and “The Snowy Day.” We all have an ordinary day story..and the more specific we are with our own story, whether we write it down or just tell it to someone, the more we will touch a chord with others . We all know about happiness and fear. We all understand disappointment and the desire for warmth... and most of us know—or at least can imagine—the pure joy of a snow day,