Caldecott Monday: The Snowy Day

[osprey_archer]

Today's Caldecott book is most weather appropriate: Ezra Jack Keats' The Snowy Day, which is about, well, a snowy day. (The Caldecott committee seems peculiarly besotted by snow. This is the third or fourth book that is all snow all the time, and I know there are at least two more coming down the list. Here is my advice for aspiring Caldecott illustrators: snow. Lots of snow)

We had this book when I was a child, and read it occasionally, although it was never a big favorite: I preferred illustrations with lots of lovely fiddly detail, like Jan Brett or Brambly Hedge. Can you look at the picture for at least an hour and still find new bits in it? Clearly a sign of A++ illustration.

The Snowy Day also has lovely illustrations, but in the opposite direction: all big simply blocks of color. In a touch that I find particularly delightful, almost all the colors are plain blocks - red for Peter's snowsuit, brown for his face (The Snowy Day is the first Caldecott book with an African-American protagonist) - except for the snow, which is white with a watercolor wash of purple and pink and blue. It's quite lovely.

Comments

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I think it must be a combination of snow being hard but also super pretty if you do it right. So a good snow book is inevitably impressive maybe?

The snow books are spread out over the whole Caldecott run, so I don't think it can be only a publishing trend. Or I suppose it could just be a decades-long trend for books about snow? Actually, books about seasons in general are just big in picturebookland, so maybe that's it.

I have not seen a book about a white cat building a snowman but that is def. Caldecott material right there, will clue in any children's book illustrators I meet in the future.

[thisbluespirit]

In my own time as a Greenaway judge, we were all impressed by a book called Albert Le Blanc, which was about a white teddy bear, and there was a lot of white on white and it got a taken-for-granted illustrator noted. So it might be that?

But I don't think the Greenaway winners have quite that fixation, so it must be a peculiarly Caldecott thing! Maybe every time they select a contentious Newbery, they go for a calming, snowy Caldecott? ;-)

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Preliminary investigation suggests no correlation between contentious Newberys and calming snowy Caldecotts. Perhaps the prevalence of snowy Caldecott books is simply destined to remain a mystery!

[thisbluespirit]

LOL, they just like snow, fair enough! :-)