Peter Spier, 89, children's book illustrator

[That Derek]

https://www.nytimes.com/section/obituaries

Sorry, gang. Children's literature isn't my bailiwick and I'm not about to spend one of my limited number of free monthly NY Times look-ups for Mr. Spier.

Lenona?

[leno...@yahoo.com]

He won the 1978 Caldecott Medal for "Noah's Ark."

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/05/books/peter-spier-dead-childrens-book-author.html?_r=0

By RICHARD SANDOMIR
MAY 5, 2017

Excerpts:

Peter Spier, an award-winning children’s-book author and illustrator who depicted Noah’s biblical journey, told the story of the Erie Canal to the words of the song “Low Bridge, Everybody Down” and gave voice to the sounds of hundreds of animals like hippos (“RRUMMPF) and starlings (“FEE-YOU”), died on April 27 in Port Jefferson, N.Y. He was 89.

The cause was congestive heart failure, said his son, Thomas.

Mr. Spier’s dozens of books are filled with meticulously drawn and brilliantly colored images, like the elephants, horses, seals, acrobats, clowns and trapeze artists in “Circus!” (1992) and the myriad pairs of animals in “Noah’s Ark” (1977).

He imbued “Noah’s Ark” with the cinematic sensibility of a Cecil B. DeMille epic, filling it with a cast of creatures that seems animated on the page. He showed Noah’s toils, like pulling a donkey onto the ark and trying to snatch two bees out of a swarm. He tossed in visual jokes, like sheets flapping on a clothesline and rabbits who enter the ark as a couple and leave it as a herd.

“Since it has no text, you have to give the story in the drawings, mine showing the work, the mess,” he said in a video made in 2012 by his publisher, Doubleday. “Also, the animals were bored on board. Noah picked eggs from his chickens.”

“Noah’s Ark” brought Mr. Spier the Caldecott Medal, the highest honor for illustrators of picture books...

...Peter Edward Spier was born on June 6, 1927, in Amsterdam and grew up in the small town of Broek in Waterland. His father, Jo, was a newspaper illustrator and cartoonist, and his mother, the former Albertine van Raalte, was a homemaker. His formal education ended in his early teens, about a year after the Nazis invaded the Netherlands in 1940.

The elder Mr. Spier was imprisoned by the Nazis for an illustration of Hitler that speculated about what would have happened had he stayed a painter. A Jew, he was subsequently deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp in Czechoslovakia, as were his wife, his sons and his daughter, Celine. They were liberated by the Soviet Red Army in May 1945.

Mr. Spier’s younger brother, Thomas, recalled in a telephone interview on Friday that the first children’s stories Peter wrote were about a zebra named Tommy who took pills to travel to the past and the future — an evocation of the freedom the brothers no longer had. “They were in pencil with a little color,” he said. “I’d say it was a precursor to what he did in the future.”...

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-authors/article/65343-doubleday-revives-peter-spier-classics.html
(2015 article on Spier)

https://blog.bookstellyouwhy.com/caldecott-medalist-peter-spier-an-illustrious-career
(another)

http://www.randomhousekids.com/videos/cnr5u7t9f_c-peter-spier-author-video#.Uk5wB9KsiSo
(short video interview)

https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&gl=us&tbm=nws&authuser=0&q=peter+spier&oq=peter+spier&gs_l=news-cc.3..43j43i53.158835.160707.0.160910.11.7.0.4.4.0.123.699.4j3.7.0...0.0...1ac.1.em8klyuq01A#q=peter+spier&hl=en&gl=us&authuser=0&tbm=vid
(more videos about his books)

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/author/peter-spier/
(many reviews)

http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6575.Peter_Spier
(reader reviews)

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2643238-the-cow-who-fell-in-the-canal?ac=1&from_search=true
(reviews of "The Cow Who Fell in the Canal")

https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22peter+spier%22+illustrator&tbm=isch&gws_rd=ssl#hl=en&tbm=isch&q=%22peter+spier%22+books
(some book covers)

From Wikipedia:

Awards

...Noah's Ark...In its first paperback edition, it won a 1982 National Book Award in category Picture Books. The book was named to the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award list in 1978.

People (1980) won a Christopher Award and was one of five finalists for the 1981 National Book Award in category Children's Nonfiction...

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/rec.arts.books.childrens/80th$20spier%7Csort:relevance/rec.arts.books.childrens/ejxElDrfkTc/a1Xm3xbq4i4J
(birthday post from 2007, with booklist and media adaptations)

Excerpts:

"The Fox Went Out on a Chilly Night" includes the musical score, arranged by Burl Ives.

http://images.google.com/images?svnum=10&hl=en&q=%22peter+spier%22+illustrator
(book covers, photo)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Spier


In "St. James Guide to Children's Writers":
" 'People' is perhaps Spier's most ambitious work. It is a book large
in size and scope, with a large number of pictures of peoples and
cultures. It has appeal to both adults and children, and can be
studied from beginning to end, over and over again. The book looks at
the differences among the billions of people who inhabit the earth.
Spier states on the first page that each and every one of us is
different from all others, unique in his or her own right. He then
describes some differences and some similarities among people around
the world. He begins with physical sizes and shapes and colors. Then
he tackles peculiarities: some people with straight hair want theirs
to be wavy, and others with little curls want their hair straight.
What is considered beautiful in one place may be considered ugly or
ridiculous elsewhere. He describes games and dwellings and artistic
tastes and celebrations. He does this with humor: reporting that
Eskimos find blubber a delicacy, Africans like elephant meat,
Frenchmen like frog legs. He reminds us that some people are rich and
some are desperately poor. People around the globe are different; how
dull the world would be if we all looked and acted the same! There is
a message here, gently told."

In "Contemporary Authors":
Peter Spier, a prolific author and illustrator of children's books,
has been lauded for the realistic, meticulous, accurate detail and
charming sense of humor found in his pictures. Spier began his career
illustrating books for other authors, but found a greater sense of
satisfaction in working on his own. His later books, almost all of
which he wrote and illustrated himself, have won him critical and
popular admiration. Bible stories, individuality, natural phenomena,
and American history have all been subjects of Spier's pen. Spier
filled his wordless 1982 National Book Award winning picture book,
Noah's Ark, with realistic details in order to differentiate it from
less specific versions of the tale. "None of [the other retellings of
the story] shows Noah shoveling manure or even hinted at the stench
and the mess inside," Spier said in his 1978 Caldecott acceptance
speech. "It was then that I knew that there was room for one more
Noah's Ark." Spier's adaptation was recognized for its beauty,
message, and unique sense of humor. A Washington Post Book World
critic called Noah's Ark "the ideal introduction to a classic Bible
story."



Lenona.

[Wendy Chatley Green]

leno...@yahoo.com wrote in
news:7df58e98-1eaf-4186...@googlegroups.com:

> He won the 1978 Caldecott Medal for "Noah's Ark."
>

He also wrote one of my children's favorite book to be read to them:
Gobble, Growl, Grunt. Woe be to any adult who missed a grackle's squawk on
the double page drawing of the flock.

--
Wendy Chatley Green
wcgreen-at-lycos.usual suffix