The Snowy Day is a 1962
children's picture book by American author and illustrator
Ezra Jack Keats. Keats received the 1963
Caldecott Medal for his illustrations in the book. It features a boy named Peter exploring his neighborhood after the first snowfall of the season. The inspiration for Peter came from a
Life magazine photo article from 1940, and Keats' desire to have minority children of New York as central characters in his stories. Peter appears in six more books growing from a small boy in
The Snowy Day to pre-adolescence in
A Letter to Amy.