“At an early age, Jacob, known later to the world as Ezra Jack Keats, became interested in art. His mother encouraged Keats’ talent, but his father seemed only to criticize Keats’ ability. Working at Pete’s Coffee Shop in Greenwich Village, Benjamin Katz knew how hard earning a living could be. He felt that his son could never really be successful as an artist. However, his father did purchase tubes of paint for Keats under the pretense of having traded bowls of soup to starving artists. ‘If you don’t think artists starve, well, let me tell you. One man came in the other day and swapped me a tube of paint for a bowl of soup’.”
(From “Ezra Jack Keats Biography,” a site maintained by The de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection at The University of Southern Mississippi.)
