The plan had been in place since late last year when my daughter Anna’s book club made their list of monthly selections for 2025 and included Becoming Ezra Jack Keats for their May selection with the idea of inviting the author (me). With the organizational skills that she either inherited or copied from her father, Anna coordinated the travel to Texas and set up the lunch at her home before the meeting. (Her reading connections were inherited or copied from her mother.)
Using the themes from Keats’ writings and habits, Anna’s table was covered with kraft paper and strewn with crayons and old-school type library cards embellished with pictures from Keats book covers. Even the lunch had a Keats theme as club members lined up to make their own salad collages from tasty ingredients along her counter.
Chatter began immediately as the club members, many of them having used Keats’s books when they taught young children, shared connections and questions. Other connections during the lively lunch came with shared experiences of being in a military family or working with children. Lunch concluded with her father’s carrot cake, requested for the occasion.
Even more fun began, as we adjourned to a circle in the living room, and I took them on my journey of how the book came to be and some of the special research finds that I uncovered. Busily talking with my hands, I began in 2001 when I saw the first EJK exhibit at the de Grummond display room and took them through to the book publication in 2023.
After this excursion, we sat and chatted with great questions and observations from the book group as they responded to their own readings of Becoming Ezra Jack Keats. One comment took me back to my own beginnings as I discovered the Ezra Jack Keats treasure in the de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection. She mirrored my own feeling when I became immersed in his archives when she said, “I wished I had known his story when I was using his books in my classroom.”
I started this blog with the title of “Fun Friday” which I thought would describe the day, but in the end, this title is a vast understatement!