Courtesy of the Ezra Jack Keats Foundation
Today, March 11, 2023, marks the 107th anniversary of the birth of a premature baby in Brooklyn, New York. His chances for survival were precarious. As a child of Jewish immigrant parents in a daily struggle to make ends meet, his chances for making a name in the world were even less probable. You can read Becoming Ezra Jack Keats to see how that turned out. While my name is on the cover, and I have spent more than a decade in the writing, others have helped make this book complete.
Three generous sources provided the photographs – The Ezra Jack Keats Foundation, the de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, and my photographer granddaughter Lauren Damaskinos. The first two provided pictures of Keats that I selected from their websites. My granddaughter, who is based in Brooklyn, took my headshot and three inside and outside pictures of the Arlington Branch Public Library that was so important in Keats’ life.
This brings me to the “bonus” from the title of this blog. Growing up in poverty in the early part of the twentieth century, photographs for young Ezra were few. The one on this blog, from the Keats Foundation, is the only one I found of him as a child with his siblings. My book designers explained “low resolution” as the reason they could not use it in the book. I understand their thinking, if not the term.
All the same, I think the picture of baby Ezra with his older siblings, Kelly and Mae, is good enough for a bonus birthday picture for my loyal readers. I ask you to join me in honoring the preemie who went on to publish picture books in sixteen languages and set a door ajar for other writers and illustrators to include and extend diversity in children’s literature.