It’s story time at the Akron Art Museum.

Not only are the walls covered with the art and the world of children’s storybook artist Ezra Jack Keats, but there’s also a gallery reading room where children can read books, and at 11:15 a.m. Fridays through June 28 someone comes to read to them.

It’s just part of the excitement brewing over the new exhibit, The Snowy Day and the Art of Ezra Jack Keats.

This is the first major U.S. exhibit to honor the award-winning author/illustrator Ezra Jack Keats (1916-1983). His children’s books include Whistle for Willie (1964), Peter’s Chair (1967) and The Snowy Day (1962), published at the height of the American Civil Rights movement and winner of the prestigious Caldecott Medal.

The Snowy Day marks a breakthrough in children’s literature because it features the first African-American protagonist in a full-color children’s picture book. Its importance can hardly be overstated; it inspired generations of readers and paved the way for multiracial representation in American children’s literature.

It also was among the first to bring a touch of realism to children’s books. The gritty urban settings of Keats’ stories revealed a landscape rarely seen in children’s books. It was a landscape Keats filled with mystery and stark beauty, and it has ever since enchanted legions of children.

The show features more than 80 original works, from preliminary sketches to final paintings and collages for the artist’s most popular books. Examples of his lesser-known works are also shown, those inspired by Asian art and haiku poetry, as well as documentary material and photographs.

Keats grew up in a poor Jewish immigrant Brooklyn neighborhood, and as Akron Art Museum Senior Curator Ellen Rudolph said, “by all accounts, he had a pretty unhappy family life and childhood. His parents weren’t emotionally generous with their children.”

But art saved him.

In fact, this entire exhibit could be said to be an example of the transformative powers of art, not just the visual arts, but all the arts.

“He was into art from an early age, drawing on the tablecloths at home, and finally receiving recognition for his work in high school, where his work received many awards.

“Art became his sky hook,” said Rudolph. “It enabled him to escape the difficult circumstances of his childhood, where he was unnoticed, always in the background, unless he was drawing pictures.”

Keats’ childhood was so culturally deprived that he had never even entered a library until he was 14.

And the awards and scholarships he received for his work in high school went practically unused, so indoctrinated was Keats by his parents to go out and earn a living immediately upon graduation.

“So he took illustration kinds of jobs, doing background illustrations for catalogs and comic books,” Rudolph explained, “and he felt very much at home in that kind of role. He felt he was a background kind of guy.”

He was born Jack Ezra Katz, but after his military service in World War II, he changed his name to Ezra Jack Keats because of increased anti-Semitism during the 1950s and 1960s.

“He also studied in Paris for about a year or so under the G.I. Bill,” Rudolph noted. “That was the only time he got any real, formal post-high-school education in art.”

On his return to New York, Keats began working as an illustrator for publications like Reader’s Digest, Colliers and the New York Times Review of Books.

“Then he started illustrating picture books. Then he was asked to illustrate picture books for children. By the time he died he had illustrated 80 children’s books. But there was a while before he did his own picture books,” Rudolph said.

“The first book that he illustrated in color was his eureka moment,” she added.

The first gallery that visitors will see is meant to convey a picture of the artist’s life in Brooklyn, with the façade of a tenement from one of his stories recreated to juice up the atmosphere. The exhibit explores Keats’ multifaceted career in six sections, preceded by an introduction and followed by an epilogue.

The introduction presents works that can be seen as self-portraits. Throughout his career, Keats cast himself as different characters, from the immigrant violinist Janos in Penny Tunes and Princesses (1972) to the junkman Barney in Louie’s Search (1980).

The “Coming of Age in Brooklyn” section features works reflecting his tenement childhood, including illustrations for Apt. 3 (1971) spotlighting some of his most painterly illustrations.

Also displayed are final drawings for Dreams (1974), where color exits Brooklyn windows into the night, and tenement inhabitants begin to dream, turning darkness into light.

Keats experimented with marbling throughout his career, and his use of marbled paper reaches a pinnacle in these illustrations, as does his examination of his chief protagonist, Louie, through illustrations for Louie (1975), The Trip (1978), Louie’s Search (1980) and Regards to the Man in the Moon (1981).

The section devoted to “Peter’s Neighborhood” includes illustrations filled with Keats’ signature elements — abandoned old doors, overflowing garbage cans, trashed umbrellas and graffitied walls — background elements the artist brought to the foreground in his books.

In this gallery the reading room is set up, inspired by Peter’s neighborhood.

The entire exhibit is meant to serve as not only a reminder of the seminal importance of the arts in the lives of children, but also as an inspiration to read, and to that end the museum has organized a series of activities in addition to the Friday story hours:

• Whole Book Approach Storytime, 1:30 p.m. March 25.

• Library of the Early Mind, 2 p.m. Saturday, a documentary film about children’s literature featuring Lemony Snicket, Gregory Maguire, Natalie Babbit, Lois Lowry, R.L. Stine and more.

• “Don’t Judge a Book by Its Cover,” a Family Drop-In event at 2 p.m. May 11 to meet picture book author and illustrator Duncan Tonatiuh and explore creative bookmaking techniques.

Organized by the Jewish Museum and drawn from the collection of the de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, the University of Southern Mississippi and funded through a grant from the Ezra Jack Keats Foundation, the exhibit remains on view through June 30 thanks to funding from GOJO Industries Inc., the Robert O. & Annamae Orr Foundation, the J.M. Smucker Co., Akron Children’s Hospital and Summa Health System.

Dorothy Shinn writes about art and architecture for the Akron Beacon Journal. Send information to her at the Akron Beacon Journal, P.O. Box 640, Akron, OH 44309-0640 or dtgshinn@att.net.