Book covers

[ladyofastolat]

I just feel the need to share the true awfulness of this book cover. This is a children's retelling of Tam Lin. You know the one - beautiful fairy queen of surpassing loveliness; handsome young earthly knight; beautiful and deadly fairy lords and ladies...



(You might have to click on the image to enlarge it for the true awfulness to be apparent.)

Quite why that handsome knight, Tam Lin, has been turned into a sulky 8 year old, I don't know. Why is he wearing an elasticated medjeevil tunic thing? It's fairy queen, ageless and immortal, not drag queen, ageing. And as for those deadly fairies... These chaps have clearly escaped from Enid Blyton, by way of the Brownies. ("Here we are, the jolly pixies, helping others in their fixes." Hmph. I've never quite forgiven Brown Owl for moving me to the elves in order to a sixer, when everyone knew that the pixies were the only ones to be. But that's another childhood trauma story.)

We used to joke at children's book selection meetings that people who failed art school ended up illustrating children's Bible stories. I've recently revised that assessment. People who fail art school illustrate folk tales. Admittedly, some folk tale retellings have excellent pictures, but many are dire. Even worse, though - and this is rather shameful - is the general standard of illustration in many of the explicitly "multicultural" titles.

While we're on the topic of book covers, I had to look for a surprisingly long time at this one before I saw it for what it was, and not as a picture of a cat whose head had been hollowed out and filled with fruity ice cream.

Comments

[gileswench.livejournal.com]

(takes illustrator of Tamlane out to be stoned to death with miniature marshmallows...pastel colored and everything)

That's beyond wrong on more levels than I can possibly express. (cries)

And boy am I glad I wasn't the only one seeing a hollow cat head full of tasty treats (though in my mind they were fruit-studded brains) and not a sparkly tiara.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

I feel the need to conduct a scientific test now. I want to take that hollow-cat-head book and show it to a hundred normal people in the street, just to find out what they see. I have this worrying feeling that it would never remotely occur to them it was a cat with a hollowed-out head. With most people here, it never seemed to cross their minds that it wasn't. ;-)

[rustica.livejournal.com]

Actually, what it reminded me of was that cookery set from the 1970s where the bowls and utensils and thingywotsits assembled to become a "man". So, yes, quite clearly it's a cat with a hollow head.

[sigisgrim.livejournal.com]

Definitely fruit-stuffed brains! Mmmm ;-)