Customer Reviews

Keats's Neighborhood: An Ezra Jack Keats Treasury

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book was a real disappointment. Keats's stories are good, but it's his illustrations that make him so wonderful. This book takes his illustrations and shrinks them down -- two , sometimes three, full-page illustrations crammed on one page. And my favorite picture from The Snowy Day didn't even make it in.

I had expected this to be the complete stories, but it's not. You would do better to buy the individual books than to buy this book.

I'm a pre-k teacher and I bought this book as part of a unit we're doing on Ezra Jack Keats. It has all the Peter stories, plus a copy of the picture of the child who inspired Peter. One thing to know is that each story's layout is very different than the original picture books. There are missing illustrations (including some of my favorites) though all of the text is there. That fact really reduces this collection's value in my opinion, especially because Keats was such a thoughtful illustrator and each picture matches with the text to evoke a much stronger meaning than words or picture alone. It's still a great book though and nice to have in the classroom or at home. If you had to choose between owning each of the originals and this collection though, go with the originals.

This book contains 10 of Ezra Jack Keats's wonderful stories. This is not cheap. (But worth every dime!) You just can't go wrong with this collection. It is a fine example of Keats's marvelous craft.

One of the things I like about this book (and Keats's books generally) is that it portrays urban settings. As a little girl growing up in a rural Midwestern town, I honestly never noticed that the main character in Snowy Day was African-American, even though none of the kids I went to school with were. That fact was unimportant to me as a child, but I can see the value of it as an adult. Exposing our children to many cultures and races can only improve the way the next generation sees the world. From the bio at the end of the book: "Childhood, in his mind, was a colorblind experience."

Keats wrote over a hundred books. It must have been hard to pick just 10 for this collection. I think you'll love the ones that were chosen, if you don't already.

Wonderful collection of Ezra Jack Keats's stories! His stories and illustrations are some of the best of our times for young children! The colors are amazing and the characters are timeless.My children and now my grandchildren are enjoying his work.

Ezra Jack Keats writes great stories for children. I read them to my children 35 years ago and read them to my grandchildren today. His books are fun to read and the pictures are a feast for the eyes.

I will honestly say I am rarely disappointed with my Amazon purchases. Today is the day: the book "Keat's Neighborhood" came with a torn dust cover ( torn in three places). This is totally unacceptable and needs to be replaced.

These are wonderful stories with lovely illustrations. I wish they would come out with a new volume that includes the pictures that are in the individual books. Kids' books for this age group are all about the pictures and cutting some out takes away from the reading experience.

When I taught first grade in the suburbs where I had a student tell me, "I saw a black person once!" (it was 25 years ago) I shared these stories with them and it opened up a whole new world to them. I would read a set of these stories, and they would beg for more. Keats is a master storyteller and artist. The pictures are colorful and fun to figure out the collage technique he used. His style is also very distinctive, and children can pick it out when shown a collection of pictures including one of his.

I am currently working now with a man in his 40s who is learning how to read, and he remembered Goggles being read to him when he was a little boy. He is enjoying reading these stories because they connect with him in the life he led in the inner city, and faced the same issues Peter did with the bullying older boys.

I especially love this book because it is a compilation of ten of the stories, and it traces Peter growing up through his adventures. We are reading Ezra Jack Keats: A Biography With Illustrations along with this book, and it is incredible how much of Keats' personal life is embedded in his stories. His brother Willie became the dog's name. His mother Gussie is the puppet that Louie finds. There are excerpts in between the stories from artists who worked with Keats or knew him or were influenced by him, which further expands understanding about the author/artist.

Should I ever return to the primary grades, I know for sure this book will have a key spot on my bookshelf.

All of the stories included in this one book were favorites of mine as a child. Now I have them all in one book! I love it!

One cannot go wrong with Keats stories! We already have a few books in our home library but I wanted to add to our collection. This compilation has not disappointed us. A great addition to any child's library.