Peter Edward Spier was born in Amsterdam on June 6, 1927. His formal education ended in his early teens, about a year after the Nazis invaded the Netherlands in 1940. His father was imprisoned by the Nazis for an illustration of Hitler that speculated about what would have happened had he stayed a painter. Since the family was Jewish, they were all sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp in Czechoslovakia. They were liberated by the Soviet Red Army in May 1945. Spier returned to the Netherlands after the war and served in the Royal Netherlands Navy for four years before immigrating to the United States in 1951. He worked in advertising before he began to write and illustrate children's books. His books included The Cow Who Fell in the Canal by Phyllis Krasilovsky, The Fox Went Out on a Chilly Night, Of Dikes and Windmills, and Circus! He received the Caldecott Medal for Noah's Ark. He died of congestive heart failure on April 27, 2017 at the age of 89.
