There are some full-page splashes, and some two page splashes. Some layout's have a top panel that stretches horizontal across two pages, with smaller panels below. Some of the pages are divided into neat, even, four-panel grids, some have two or four vertical panels stretched up and down across the page. featuring the lucky, lucky sea life, which made out a lot better than the land-going creatures during this whole great deluge business (There must be some connection between the possession of legs and sinning against God, I think). It's published by book publisher Doubleday, its format and price point are more kids book than comic book and you'll likely find it shelved with other picture books in a library or book store rather than with the graphic novels, but whatever Spier, Doubleday or Noah's Ark itself may think, it's a book told in sequential images, most of its pages divided into various grid shapes like a comic book page (there are no square blank ink borders around the 'panels,' but they're set apart from one another with gutters of white space. Yes, Noah's Ark falls into that overlap of the comics and children's books circles on a hypothetical Venn diagram. But, since I've already gone to the trouble of scanning some pages from it, I'm going to go ahead and do so anyway.Īnd why is this children's book bear any discussion at all on a comics blog? Because Spier's Noah's Ark is actually a comic book/graphic novel/work of sequential art/ 'graphic book'. So given that this is a 32-year-old book, and one that won the Caldecott, which is like the Oscar for children's book illustration, I suppose there's little to no real point in discussing it here now. And while I knew it won the Caldecott medal-as the shiny gold metallic stamp on the cover makes it clear- I didn't realize it won it all the way back in 1978. It was originally published in 1977, making it as old as me and Star Wars. I didn't realize it until I sat down to write this post about it, but prolific children's book author and illustrator Peter Spier's Noah's Ark is a pretty old book.

Noahs ark peter spier