Debut Picture Book Cover - I'm In!

Over at 100 Scope Notes you'll find directions for creating your own picture book cover. Here's what you do.

1. Go to The Name Generator and click GENERATE NEW NAME. The name that appears is your author name.
2. Go to Picture Book Title Generator and click CREATE TITLE! This is the title of your picture book.
3. Go to FlickrCC and type the last word from your title into the search box followed by the word “drawing”. Click FIND. The first suitable image is your cover.
4. Use Photoshop, Picnik, or similar to put it all together. Gettin’ creative is encouraged.
5. Post it to your site along with this text.
6. Go to 100 Scope Notes to see the gallery of covers!

And here's my cover ...

Image courtesy of

http://www.flickr.com/photos/70831250@N00/2284892796

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.