THE STORY OF NOAH AND THE ARK

Spirin’s detailed, luminous paintings provide a traditional interpretation of the familiar Old Testament story, using the old-fashioned, measured cadences of the King James Bible as the text. The elegant design includes text blocks incorporated into illustrations of God as a white-haired old man looking down from his heaven or depictions of Noah looking out of portholes in the Ark. These facing text pages utilize mirror images in the illustrated elements, subtly reinforcing the two-by-two theme. A recurring circular inset in the upper corners of the text pages includes the relevant Bible verse citations or a related illustration, such as the dove returning with an olive leaf. The pages relating the story are interspersed with wordless spreads that allow Spirin more freedom to explore the sweep of the story by showing the enormous Ark, the parade of intriguing animal pairs, and the surging waters of the flood overshadowed by black clouds. These spreads have a mysteriously dusky lighting giving them the look of old masterpieces from a long-gone era. (poster) (Picture book/nonfiction. 5-9)