Tuesday, January 13, 2009

The Lure of the Cover

I'm a regular reader of the blog Jacket Whys. The author is a youth services librarian and former graphic designer. She(?) writes great posts, many of which are thoroughly fascinating discussions of cover art and design trends.

The most recent post is the first installment in a series on the best covers of 2008. Just looking at them made me want to read all three books. I'm particularly enamored of the cover for The Robe of Skulls, written by Vivian French and illustrated by Ross Collins. The cover is eerie, so I was a bit surprised to see the age range listed as 6-10. If you follow the link to the book (above), you can read an excerpt or the entire first chapter! It's good stuff (though I'm not sure about 6-year old readers).

Go check out the choices Jacket Whys has made to date and see what you think. I so like these selections that I can't wait to see the remaining seven.

4 comments:

  1. LOVE her blog and introduced it to E. Bird at Fuse #8. Wonderful stuff.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I love Robe of Skulls and Bag of Bones! I book teased (read the first couple chapters) of RoS to my 3rd grade last year, and they nominated it for their Book of the Year this year (as 4th graders). I think it's a solid late 3rd grade through late 5th grade read. JMHO!

    ReplyDelete
  3. I'm another Robe of Skulls fan--6 might be a tad young, but it would depend on the kid...

    ReplyDelete
  4. Oooh, I hadn't seen Jacket Whys before, but I have a feeling I've just visited for the first of many times -- thanks for the tip, Tricia!

    ReplyDelete