The boy in Ezra Jack Keats’ *The Snowy Day* is named Peter. He is a young child who explores his city neighborhood after waking to find it covered in freshly fallen snow.
Published in 1962, the picture book follows Peter through a series of simple but memorable winter experiences: making footprints, dragging a stick through the snow, building a snowman, and joining other children in snowball play. He saves a snowball in his pocket to keep the feeling of the day, but it melts indoors.
Peter’s quiet adventure was groundbreaking because it centered a Black child in a universal story of childhood wonder without making race the plot’s subject. Keats drew inspiration from photographs of a young Black boy he had seen in *Life* magazine. The book won the Caldecott Medal in 1963, and Peter later appeared in several other books by Keats.