Mr Ripley's Enchanted Books GRAND FINAL Children's Book Cover Illustration Winner 2023/24

The latest installment of our captivating children's book cover competition has concluded, marking another outstanding year for children's book cover illustration.  We extend our deepest gratitude to all the voters, supporters, talented illustrators, dedicated authors, and forward-thinking publishers who rallied behind our annual competition. Despite the challenges in garnering attention on social media, we've navigated through five brilliant rounds, buoyed by your adventurous and discerning votes. 

This journey has allowed us to highlight and showcase 36 exceptional book covers, although the sheer abundance of talent and remarkable illustrators meant that many more could have been featured. Regrettably, not all receive the recognition they truly deserve, but we aspire on our website to illuminate their creative brilliance and efforts. 

A heartfelt thank you to everyone who championed and voted for these covers throughout the rounds - your support has truly done them justice.  It brings me immense joy to reveal that the winning book cover was illustrated by Hannah McCaffery for Bex Hogan's "Bronte Tempestra and the Lightning Steeds," set to be published by Piccadilly Press on February 1, 2024. Another worthy winner to go into the Hall of FAME. 

Guest Post by Samuel Perrett - Senior Fiction Designer – Hachette Children’s Group.

Welcome to the fantastic guest post by Samuel Perrett, who is the Senior fiction designer at Hachette Children’s Group. This post takes a look at the production and design of Bex Hogan's Viper/Venom books. It shows the final choice and the process that is undertaken before the final decision is made about the resulting book cover. This decision can make or break a book, so it is vitally important to get it right. In this case, they have done a brilliant job with the design and production of each book in the series so far. 

 “So… Do You Draw the Pictures?” 

Quite often when I meet people for the first time and they ask what I do, and say “I design children’s books”, the response is usually, “So … do you draw the pictures?”. This is understandable, as often ‘children’s books’ conjures up images of picture books, however, the world of children’s publishing is so broad. Ranging from preschool board books, picture books, and activity books through to illustrated chapter books, middle-grade fiction, young adult epics, and graphic novels. 


The role of the designer is to conceptualise, commission and create; with each book bringing different challenges and requirements. It is a big task to create a book cover because as much as we are told not to, we are all guilty of judging a book by its cover. Not to mention each designer has their own way of working, different processes to visualise their ideas. To help showcase my particular process for designing a cover, I have chosen to focus on the cover for Bex Hogan’s ‘Viper’, which published in April and is the first book in the Isles of Storm and Sorrow series. A thrilling and fast-paced fantasy YA novel, that follows the story the strong and courageous, Marianne. 

Like all projects, I started with a brief from the editor. Which contains information such as the plot, the feel-and-tone of the book and any other stand-out elements. The key themes of the book were; fantasy, adventure, danger, and (a hint of) magic. From that, I created loose ‘thumbnail’ drawings of cover concepts. Thinking about the composition of the image, the structure or hierarchy of the information and how to incorporate the key themes. 

Then some of the thumbnails were worked into concepts. They are still rough and unfinished, but this is part of my process to see how the idea looks when it is more ‘fleshed out’ and less of scribble on the page. 

The first concept showcased an inky dual image of Marianne in the snake’s mouth and was discarded pretty quickly. It is the starting of a narrative-led yet abstract design that had energy and movement with the textured brushstrokes. Even at this rough stage and with some of the details missing, I felt the concept would struggle to carry across the rest of the series and would require too much decoding by the reader to understand the premise of the book. With the cover having such a big pull in shops, and especially online, having an image that requires too much work to understand will never work, particularly when designing for children. 

These two concepts are more worked-up than the first and contain elements that informed the final cover. The artwork is created using some vectors from the image library, Shutterstock, that have been edited and with extra artwork I created. Both of these take a more decorative approach whilst keeping a sense of danger and adventure. 

After presenting these concepts to the editor along with the sales and the marketing teams, I had feedback to have more focus and give a greater sense of fantasy. 

The final concept is the response to that feedback. Having a single snake hissing for focus and giving a sense of danger, wrapping it around the compass to nod towards the journey/adventure. Adding in the sea and the starts to suggest the nautical setting, whilst keeping the visuals very graphic and decorative, so the silver and gold foil that I had planned added to the notion of magic. 

All of the elements were working well together, however, the hierarchy of the title and branding still needed work. In this concept Bex’s name, the series title and the title are holding very similar weighting. It was decided to keep Bex’s name at the top and to lead with the title, rather than the series title. I needed to find lettering to really make the title stand out and be able to echo the key themes of the book. 

This is a selection of the fonts that I looked at (there were plenty more), along with the base font that I started with and then edited for the final cover. Each has a different feel to them; some felt too fussy and they would conflict with the decorative nature of the cover; whilst others were too hard to read when small. The font that I ultimately selected has a slight nod towards being ‘pirate-like’ and is strong and bold. I then edited the letters to have more fluidity and movement and add some extra flourishes. (Such as a subtle ‘fang’ on the ‘R’ to echo the one already on the top of the ‘V’. This is something that can be taken as purely decorative or potentially go unnoticed, but it’s always fun to add a little something extra when the time is right.) 


Once the type was resolved and extra elements like the border were naturally added to balance out of the overall composition, the cover was complete. Thankfully, the author was very happy with the final design and then the cover was revealed. The printed books are finished with gold and silver foil giving them a luxurious shine that really stands out on the shelves. 


As mentioned previously, when designing the first book in a new series, there is always the thought in the back of your head about how the visual language of book one will translate to books two and beyond. With Viper it has such a strong structure that creating the cover for Venom was thankfully pretty straightforward. Keeping the key elements like the compass and the border, my focus was more on finding a way to incorporate all the new elements whilst ensuring the covers look different to each other, but still part of the same family.

So, to round off, do I draw the pictures? Sometimes yes, but sometimes no. More-often-than-not I get the privilege to work with incredibly talented illustrators who are able to bring new worlds and characters to life. But, no matter how the artwork is created, every cover comes the aim to refine the authors' words into one powerful image that can capture the attention and imagination of a reader.

Bex Hogan - Viper: Book 1 (Isles of Storm and Sorrow) - Blog Tour Interview - Orion Books

Welcome to Mr. Ripley's Enchanted Books. Today, I have a Q&A interview with Bex Hogan. This book has been an epic ten years in the making. In fact, there have been seven manuscripts and many rejections along the way. However, here we are celebrating the release of the fantastic debut book today. This week we are kicking off a blog tour with posts that will, hopefully, pique your interest. It's a brilliant high seas fantasy adventure that will take you to some amazing places. The book will be published on the 18th April 2019 by Orion Children's Books. It's going to be an epic trilogy that you will not want to miss. #StormAndSorrow

If you would like to know more about this book then please check out my book review HERE. So let us start this interview by welcoming Bex Hogan.

Your debut book, Viper, is the first book in the Isles of Storm and Sorrow. What can we expect and why should we read it? 
Viper is a YA fantasy adventure set on the high seas. The first in a trilogy, it follows Marianne, the Viper’s daughter, who has to choose whether she’s prepared to sacrifice everything to fight against her cruel father. You can expect corruption, betrayal, magic and romance, all set against a backdrop of beautiful islands and dangerous oceans. At times it’s brutal and bloody – so if any of that appeals and you fancy a read, you’d make a writer very happy.

How and where did you get the idea for this book? 
As so many of my ideas do, it came in a dream. It was a very vivid scene and when I woke up, I just had to know more about these characters. And what was going to happen next? What had led them to this point? 
Though the story has evolved through many drafts, this scene is still in the book, exactly as I dreamt it. 


Did you let the story and the characters take you on a journey or did you map out the whole plot and know exactly what you wanted to write? 
To start with, it was definitely a case of going on an adventure with my characters, just to get to know them, and glimpse the world they inhabited. But then there comes a point where you need to take the map back from them and plot your own course, otherwise, you could be wandering a bit aimlessly. And with plotting out a whole trilogy, it’s definitely important that you know where you’re going and why. 


What real-life inspirations did you draw from the worldbuilding within your book? 
Growing up in Cornwall near the coast, seeing the sea stretching beyond rugged cliffs every day, was a huge inspiration for the Twelve Isles. We used to go to the Isles of Scilly too, for holidays, island-hopping in boats, and they were very much my template for a world of islands connected by an ocean. 

Where is your preferred place to write? 
My favourite place to write is at my desk in my writing room. I was very fortunate that we were able to convert our garage a couple of years ago, so I have space to be creative. I would like to pretend that it’s a tidy desk, but the truth is I’m usually buried beneath a pile of paperwork, and notebooks full of jotted down ideas. And more paperwork. 

How important are stories to you? 
Stories are everything – I think they are to most people in one form or another. They can be friends when you are lonely, teachers when you need guidance, an escape when life becomes too much. They can carry the weight of history. Shape societies. Or simply entertain. 

Some of my favourite memories from childhood are the quiet ones where my mum would read to me, or my brother would make up stories for me on a moorland walk. I think the tales they told knitted their way into the fabric of my being, and will always stay with me. 


What genre of books do you like to read? Do you limit yourself to reading only the genre that you write yourself? 
The only requirement I have is that a book tells a good story, simple as that. It can be in any genre, although I do have a soft spot for historical novels, and of course, fantasy. But ultimately, all I want is to be swept away, to fall in love with characters and their lives, and to miss them when they’re gone. So not too much to ask!