Meeting Peter

It was snowing the day my mother handed me a package that contained, A Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats. It wasn’t a holiday and it wasn’t my birthday, but I had grown to expect my mother gifting me books any day of the week. I would read during breakfast, on the bus, during recess, after school, and sometimes way into the night. These gifts full of words created my imagination, which was out of this world, out of the multi-verse to be exact. My willingness to disbelieve was born when reading as a child. I had a propensity for books and used them as an escape from the day-to-day goings on of my family’s life.

The wrapping paper was odd. Usually I would wake up to a few books on the table in the morning or my mom would return from work with a bag full of books. When I tore through the wrapping paper, I saw the most amazing image I had ever seen. I was definitely used to seeing powerful images of Black people as a child, but this was different. The picture of Peter (main character of “A Snowy Day”) with his snow suit and the colorful buildings was striking. I instantly said, “That’s me.” I felt a huge connection to him. I literally saw myself in him. My mother later explained that she gave this same book to me when I was 2 years old when we lived in Seattle with my Dad. Since I was 7 at the time, I now know why this book was gift-wrapped; it was a reunion of sorts with my earlier childhood.

“Books provided a passport to other worlds for me”

To my mother’s delight, I read the book in seconds. I remember fondly how I moved my hands across Peter’s Black face, all of the illustrations and the text. I wanted to do the same things that Peter did in the book. Since it was snowing outside, my mother and I went out into the mid-winter’s eve and made snow angels. I even brought home a snowball to see if it would melt like Peter’s did. Just like Peter, my snowball was melted when I awoke in the morning. I did this for a few days actually, bringing snowballs into the house. I wondered if I could do something different than Peter and actually keep a snowball frozen till morning.

Books provided a passport to other worlds for me, they still do. Every book I got my hands on offered me a sense of adventure, information and reinforced the importance of a story. I would analyze and attempt to re-enact themes of the novels I read. That’s where my love for acting and theater was born. I would read a book and then reenact the scenes in “performances” with my friends. There was a link between what I read and my playtime with those who made up my friend circle. The friends of mine who read would be able to fall into space and time easily, my other friends who didn’t read would just need a brief explanation of the world created in the book, and then we would all start our performance.

“When it was time to be monsters, we let our wild side out”

My first memory of this type of play was with the book, Where the Wild Things Are, by Maurice Sendak. My cousin and I would make a huge fort and a ship so we could sail through the night, away from our family to a land of wild things, colorful looking monsters and beasts. Of course, we both wanted to always be Max, so we made an agreement that we would both exchange roles as the parent in the book. We would laugh because we could never speak to our mothers like Max because we would get in so much trouble if we ever talked back. But it was great to imagine, play, create, and experience an alternative universe in our childhood. Play is SUPER important to me because of that time. I think seeing Max at play, using his imagination to create a world, gave me permission to do the same. Of course, when it was time to be monsters, we let our wild side out.

Both of these books gave me a space, so similar and yet different than the world that I lived in. I felt an instant connection between both of the characters, the wild and the obedient, the imaginative, and an excitement of reality. In these stories I learned how to see the written word as inspiration for me to create and play.  The written word was a seed that was planted in my mind that would sprout into a vivid imagination and help to make a colorful and more dynamic world. Max and Peter showed me that I could make any experience more expressive by using my creativity and my imagination.