The Snowy Day

On the morning of the season's first snowfall, Peter, a young African American boy, heads out in his red snowsuit to explore his city neighborhood. He makes tracks, builds a snowman, makes snow angels and slides down a hill, though he is too young to join the older children's snowball fight. Ezra Jack Keats wrote and illustrated the 1962 picture book in collage, using paper, fabric and cloth, a homemade snowflake stamp and India ink spattered with a toothbrush. He drew on photographs of a boy in Life magazine and on memories of his own Brooklyn childhood. It won the Caldecott Medal, making it the first picture book centered on an African American child to take a major children's prize.

Michelle Obama counted it among her favorites, describing it as a simple story of a boy's adventures on a snowy day.