There is an overwhelming feeling of ennui and weariness. In one image we see a tired Noah slumped at a candle-lit table, surrounded by animals, untidy stores and row upon row of wet washing. Spread from Noah’s Ark illustrated by Peter SpierĪ sense of time passing is conveyed by the switches between day and night.
The animals in turn play their part, with the hens providing fresh eggs for the sailors. Noah takes trouble to care for each individual creature, talking to the tigers, admiring the birds’ chicks and feeding the hippos and seals fresh fish. Spread from Noah’s Ark illustrated by Peter Spier These larger, often more simple, images can also help to emphasise the magnitude of the events being shown, such as the relentless rain teeming from the sky into the ocean. This provides a refreshing ‘breathing space’ in-between the more complex panels on the other pages.
The pacing of the illustrations is varied, with the occasional large image filling a whole spread. For instance Noah’s wife is so scared of the mice she has to jump up onto a basket, while Noah has trouble fending off the crows and yanking a reluctant donkey on board. Plenty of humour is packed into each image. Each is given distinctive characteristics and behaves in a manner true to its nature. All sizes of creature are covered, from the largest, such as elephants and giraffes, to the smallest, such as snails and worms. The story begins with Noah and his wife overseeing the animals being loaded onto the ark. Many have so much detail that it requires considerable concentration to ‘read’ them carefully to absorb each element of the picture, and there are often many hidden jokes to spot. In 60 three-syllable lines, it tells the biblical story of Noah’s Ark. This poem was translated from the Dutch by Peter Spier himself.
Noah’s Ark, though mainly wordless, is prefaced by a seventeenth century poem called ‘The Flood’ by Jacobus Revius (1586-1658). Noah’s Ark – Wordless Books Wordless Books Noah’s Ark (1977)
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