anti:freeze

cover illustration for The Snowy Day

Have you ever read The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats? Whenever someone asks how I discovered writing, I remember the little boy in the bright red snowsuit.

And I remember the word breakfast appeared in the text. I was reading to myself, curled up in my father's recliner, when I got stuck on this word. It looked ugly below the brilliant illustrations. And worse, it made no sense. How could breakfast evoke cereal, orange juice, pancakes, and maple syrup? How could those syllables ever taste as sweet as the first morsel of food every morning?

I whispered the word over and over. Breakfast breakfast breakfast. And suddenly, I realized that breakfast was made up of two separate words - that I could break the word down into its components. Break. Fast. Break. Fast.

Breakfast! I shouted to my mom. You break the fast! It makes sense! This was some time before kindergarten, though I don't remember the year. (I do remember hoping we would read books like this at school.)

I immediately ransacked my father's magazine stand, searching for more words to break down. Words contained hidden messages. Words could be cut, collaged, transformed. Words were bubbling over with possibility.

Looking back, there was something else in The Snowy Day that inspired me. In the story, a young boy wakes up to a snow-covered, urban wonderland. He leaves blue footprints in the snow. He uses a stick to shake flakes from the tree branches. And best of all, he is a child psychogeographer, actively transforming the city with his imagination.