The Snowy Day 2017 Forever Stamps — Ezra Jack Keats, Booklet of 20

Issue facts

Issued: October 4, 2017
First Day City: Brooklyn, NY
Printed by: Ashton Potter
Method: Offset
Format: Double-sided booklet of 20

The illustrator

Ezra Jack Keats was born to poor Polish-Jewish immigrants and was making art before anyone encouraged him to — assembling pieces out of scraps of wood, cloth and paper. His father tried to steer him away from an artist's life, while periodically bringing home tubes of paint.

He educated himself largely at the local library and found refuge in school art classes. A drawing medal won in junior high stayed with him for the rest of his life; in high school he took a national prize for an oil painting and graduated with honors in art.

Career

After the war he spent time in Paris, then returned to New York and worked as a commercial artist, with illustrations appearing in Reader's Digest, The New York Times Book Review and Collier's. He produced artwork for a number of book jackets and exhibited at the Associated American Artists Gallery in the 1950s.

He went on to write and illustrate 22 of his own books. They are set in cities and feature children from a range of cultures — and they consistently hand those children real difficulties young readers recognize: becoming an older sibling, standing up for a friend, dealing with a bully.

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