The Snowy Day

The Snowy Day

by: Ezra Jack Keats

Keats, E. J. (1962). The Snowy Day  . New York: Viking Press.

Interest Level: Pre-K - 2

Grade Level Equivalent: 3.2

Lexile® measure: 500L

DRA: 16-18

Guided Reading: J

Genre/Theme: Fiction

The Snowy Day is a story of a little boy, Peter, going out to play in the snow. He wakes up in the morning to a new snowfall. After breakfast he gets dressed up to go outside and play. He makes different kinds of footprints, has a snowball fight, makes snow angels and finally comes inside only to dream that it all melted.

The Snowy Day is a simple story. I would use it for striving readers or young readers. The theme is simple, and easy to understand. The book would not be a good choice if the teacher is looking to develop students socially, emotionally, or cognitively. It would be a good fiction book to use in a unit about winter or snow in a Kindergarten classroom to talk about the things people do when it snows. A possible lesson to go with it might be a drawing/writing lesson about the things that the students like to do when it snows.

The one criticism of the book is that it does not accurately depict the African American boy. If someone were to simply change the color of his skin, he could easily be white. It is important that we choose books that accurately depict different ethnicities, but we could use this book to talk a little bit about race and why it is he looks that way.

I would use this book in my classroom, as long as I was able to acknowledge that Peter was not accurately depicted.