Peter Spier

About Peter Spier

Peter Spier (6 June 1927 to 27 April 2017) was a Dutch-born American illustrator and writer of children's books, best known for Noah's Ark (1977), a largely wordless retelling of the Bible story that won the Caldecott Medal.

Spier was born in Amsterdam and grew up mostly in Broek in Waterland. His father was Jo Spier, a leading Dutch newspaper and advertising illustrator. During the Second World War the family was held at Villa Bouchina in Doetinchem and then at Theresienstadt, and survived. Afterwards Spier studied at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam and served four years in the Royal Netherlands Navy before the family moved to the United States around 1950. He began in commercial art for advertising agencies, then turned to books, settling on Long Island.

His early illustration work included Phyllis Krasilovsky's The Cow Who Fell in the Canal (1957), an edition of Mary Mapes Dodge's Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates (1958) and Anne Frank's Tales from the House Behind (1962). His own books, worked in pen, ink and watercolour and packed with small historical and comic details, include The Fox Went Out on a Chilly Night (1961), London Bridge Is Falling Down! (1967), People (1980), Rain (1982), Christmas! (1983) and We the People (1987). Most were published by Doubleday. He produced at least 36 children's books between 1957 and 1994 and died in Port Jefferson, New York, aged 89.

For collectors: The Fox Went Out on a Chilly Night was a 1962 Caldecott Honor Book. Noah's Ark won the Caldecott Medal and was named to the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award list in 1978; its first paperback edition won the 1982 National Book Award for picture books. People won a Christopher Award. Doubleday was the original American publisher of many of his titles, with later editions from Dragonfly Books and Random House.