Birdbrain(ed) Book Blog

I’ve mentioned previously that I nearly always judge a book by its cover. If a book is by an author I’ve read before, or if it’s something that I have on my wishlist, then I tend not to care as much about the cover. However, if I’m browsing in a store or at the library, a book’s cover definitely plays a large part in my decision to pick it up. Ugly covers tend to be a no-go for me, as you can imagine.

Going off of this, different editions of books tend to have different covers, and looking at all of them can be quite fun. I always get really jealous when a different country gets a great cover, and I’m stuck with a sub par one!

For my first post on this topic (I do plan to do at least a few more), I decided to check out one of my favorite Diana Wynne Jones books, Charmed Life. There’s been quite a few editions released over the years, but I only have one (two, if you count the jacketless hardcover ex-library version. But since that doesn’t have a cover, I’m obviously not counting it.).

This is the one I have, and I think it’s the one my friend let me borrow way back when I hadn’t yet heard of Diana Wynne Jones. This is the cover of volume 1 of the Chronicles of Chrestomanci. It’s got both Charmed Life and The Lives of Christopher Chant, and it’s not so bad, as covers go. It’s not really exciting, but it does have that air of “magic!” to it. And the gold lettering is nice. The cat’s cute, too.

This one’s for the newer single release (I think). It incorporates a lot more of the story elements besides the cat: Cat (the character) is there, as well as the book of matches, the frog, a book, and…a mirror? I think it’s a mirror. All things that’re in the story, though of course you wouldn’t know that if you hadn’t, er, read the book before. There’s another version of this cover somewhere, too, without the big archway in front of everything. Also I just noticed how massive that cat is. Sheesh!

This is one of the British editions. I love it! It’s quite charming, eh? There’s Chrestomanci on the very right, there, plus Cat and his sister Gwendolyn. And Chrestomanci Castle! And there’s the dragon as well, who’s name I unfortunately forgot for the moment. I especially love the type for the title and author’s name. It’s not too fancy, but it’s fancy enough to be fun and slightly whimsical.

And lastly there’s this one, which is disappointingly boring. I think this is the Scottish version. At any rate, it’s not bad, but it could have been better, I think. I do like the swooshing stars and the colors used for the text. But– am I the only one who gets annoyed when the author’s name is bigger than the title of the book? It just seems uneven.

So there we are! I’m sure there’s lots more, but these are the ones I found on the first page of Google Image Search. I did find this Japanese cover here, though (along with some more cover versions):

Quite chaotic, but very interesting. I like how all the characters seem to be moving; it has a great amount of excitement to it. It’s nearly too busy, actually, but the white space around everything calms it down a bit. This cover reminds me of the scene at the end, where everyone is chasing Fiddle the cat (does that count as a spoiler?) and everything is crazy. The watercolors are a nice touch, too.

Oh, and here’s one more cover I found on Wikipedia:
I think I actually hate this one more than the boring Scottish one. If I was a kid I wouldn’t want to pick it up; it looks horribly boring and stodgy. (The book really isn’t, though!)

What’s your favorite cover? And are there any other non-US/UK ones I haven’t found?

(The formatting for this was a nightmare, FYI. How does the post look to you? Is it messed up?)