The Snowy Day

A proposito di neve... The Snowy Day è il titolo di un bel libretto per bambini di Ezra Jack Keats (Viking). E' uscito 50 anni fa ed è un libro importante, perché è stato uno dei primi a rappresentare un bambino africano-americano, senza metterlo in caricatura. "One morning many years ago, a little boy in Brooklyn named Peter woke up to an amazing sight: fresh snow. Peter is the hero of the classic children's book by Ezra Jack Keats, The Snowy Day, which turns 50 this year. Peter has a red snowsuit, a stick just right for knocking snow off of trees, and a snowball in his pocket. And, though this is never mentioned in the text, Peter is African-American.

'It wasn't important. It wasn't the point,' Deborah Pope tells. ... Pope is the executive director of the Ezra Jack Keats Foundation. 'The point is that this is a beautiful book about a child's encounter with snow, and the wonder of it,' Pope says. Peter was among the first non-caricatured African-Americans to be featured in a major children's book. But Pope says Keats - who was white - wasn't necessarily trying to make a statement about race when he created Peter." npr.