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

[torkell]

Okay, that first cover makes no sense. I've just read Tam Lin (tracked down the child ballad version), and the people on the cover just don't fit with the story.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

I imagine it's the scene, told in flashback, when he fell from his horse and was originally taken by the Queen of Fairy. The ballad doesn't specify how old he was when this happened, or how long ago it was - though I think the implication is that it was no more than seven years ago, and also that he was already old enough for the Queen to find attractive. This retelling seems to have had him captured as a child, and reclaimed as a teenager. Presumably they felt this gave it more child appeal.