Nothing Is Spared In Noah's Ark

Noah's Ark by Peter Spier

Warning to all those people who are sucked in by the proliferation of cute nursery décor to thinking that Noah's Ark is a sweet, children's story. There is more to the tale than sweetness and light. There is a horror to this story, a horror that might be a little rough on the nursery set.

I suppose it is our continued obsession with filling our urban infants' heads with animal pictures and noises that account for the proliferation of Noah books and décor that are sweet and cute. Add to the mix that it is a Bible story, and the sales figures start racketing up for any Noah publisher.

The 1978 Caldecott-award winning picture book by Peter Spier, Noah's Ark, makes no attempt to sugarcoat the story. Peter Spier certainly includes the joyful aspects of the story, but he also shows the darker side.

Most of the story is told with pictures. Only one page has any words. That page, at the beginning of the book, is the translation of a poem called The Flood. It was written originally in Dutch in the 17th Century by Jacobus Revius.

I'm a big fan of books which tell stories using pictures alone. David Wiesner does it well in Sector 7. While teaching drama to six- to nine-year-olds, my husband and I spent a fair amount of time discussing how a story could be told without words. With the older children, we discussed how the ballet they had seen told a story even though all the words were sung in a language they did not understand. For the younger children, we pulled out a picture book without words and had them tell the story. The children were very responsive to this sort of activity as it invites them into taking an active role in the storytelling.

So it is with Noah's Ark. The reader must be actively involved, telling the story in his or her head. We won't, though, be using this book for a classroom activity anytime soon. My son was outraged as of the second spread as Noah's family held back all the animals who could not go on the boat. He asked what would happen to those animals and I responded honestly that they were going to drown.

"That's not very nice!" he said outraged.

"No, it's not," I agreed. "But the boat wasn't going to be big enough to hold all the animals."

"Then they should have built a bigger boat."

"It might have sank," I tried to explain. My son was unconvinced. He was distressed by the elephants both young and old who watched the favored ones climb the ramp to the boat. Then after it began to rain, you saw all the animals left behind standing around the ark and watching it sadly. In the next picture, you no longer see the short animals and the water is up to the shoulders of the elephants while the giraffes tower above them. Then it is all water and no animals. This is harsh stuff.

The book isn't without its lighter side, though. Inside you see Noah's wife standing on boxes as the mice run by, mice that are later pushing on an elephant's paw, trying to get it to move off the one mouse's tail.

Spier also shows life inside the Ark-the massive amount of work, the moments of camaraderie, the exhaustion. We see Noah mucking stalls, feeding animals, listening to complaints, and helping to birth new animals. Spier makes Noah highly expressive, revealing bemusement, interest, exhaustion, worry.

It is a book where the illustrations do an excellent job of telling the story without the hindrance of words. Even the emotional reaction that it got from my son was further proof of the book's effectiveness and strength. It launched us into some rather interesting theological discussions (which is another reason I wouldn't take this book into a classroom. It sparks the sort of discussion which should be handled in the home.)

Noah's Ark brought Peter Spier the Caldecott Award, but he is no stranger to literature awards. Spier has also won Boston Globe-Horn Awards, Christopher Medals, and a Children's Science Book Award. Spier was born and educated in Amsterdam, serving in the Royal Dutch Navy before coming to New York in 1952. He has illustrated more than 100 books. One of his hobbies might explain why he was able to draw such excellent pictures in Noah's Ark. Spier builds ship models in his spare time. --B. Redman