MR RIPLEY'S ENCHANTED BOOKS: Children's Book Cover Illustration Competition - ROUND FIVE - 2024/25

We welcome YOU once again to Mr Ripley's Enchanted Books 15th Annual Children's Book Cover Illustration Competition! This vibrant event showcases and celebrates the incredible talent and creativity of artists from all around the world. As we continue to foster a love for highlighting the unsung heroes/teams of our favourite book covers.  Join us on this exciting journey and spread the word as we embark on another year of discovering extraordinary artistry that brings enchanting stories to life through the power of illustrations. Get ready to unleash your inner artist and be a part of this remarkable celebration of children's illustration and design! Previous winners HERE!

Mr. Ripley's Enchanted Book Cover Competition Rules 

There will be FIVE (5 OF 5) weekly heats; each with SIX books to vote for. Although there will be 7 book covers in the final to vote for. All heat winners will make the grand final plus two book covers WITH the highest number of votes from all the previous heats.

ROUND ONE WINNER: Susan Cahill - The World Between the Rain - Published by Everything with Words (24 Oct. 2024) - Book Cover Illustration by Holly Ovenden. 

ROUND TWO WINNER: Kevin Moran - The Doomsday - Published by O'Brien Press (3 March 2025) - Book Cover Illustration by Tomislav Tikulin - Cover design by Emma Byrne

ROUND THREE WINNER:  Kate Thompson - Yetis Don't Exist! - Published by Templar Publishing (7 Nov. 2024) - Book Cover Illustrated by Loretta Schauer 

ROUND FOUR WINNER: Antonia Maxwell - Terra Electrica: The Guardians of the North - Published by Neem Tree Press Limited (4 July 2024) - Book Cover by Jet Purdie 

Each week you vote you will be in with a chance to win an exciting prize. 

This week's great prize is a £10 Book Voucher/Bar of chocolate/Hardback Book. Good luck everybody! 

If you are interested all you need to do is:

• Vote for your favourite book cover using the poll HERE  (or at the bottom of the post)
• Leave a comment through this post/poll or see pinned Tweet/X or other socials for more details on @Enchantedbooks
• This poll will end on the 12th of January 2025 at Midnight (UK). 

Have fun and please share with the world through X, Facebook, Threads, and Instagram. Watch the voting develop, and wait to hear whether you've won (once the poll has closed).

Here are the six brilliant book covers to vote for this week: 

 

BOOK ONE: Judith Eagle - The Great Theatre Rescue - Published by Faber & Faber (13 Feb. 2025) - Book Cover Illustration by Jui Talukder - VOTE HERE 

BOOK TWO: Jasbinder Bilan - Puloma and the Bear - Published by Barrington Stoke (13 Mar. 2025) -  Book Cover Illustrated by Skylar White - VOTE HERE

BOOK THREE: Alexandra Dawe - The Stitchwort Curse - Book Published by - UCLan Publishing (5 Sept. 2024) - Book Cover Illustrated by Olia Muza - VOTE HERE 

BOOK FOUR: Larry Hayes - The Nightmares of Finnegan Quick - Book Published by Bloomsbury Children's Books (2 Jan. 2025) - Book Cover Illustrated by Berat Pekmezci - VOTE HERE

BOOK FIVE: Victoria Williamson -  Skyfleet: March of the Mutabugs - Published by Tiny Tree Books (24 Oct. 2024) - Book Cover Illustration by James Brown - VOTE HERE

BOOK SIX: Sally Doherty - Toby and the Siege of Sky City - Book Published by Soaring Skies Publishing ( 26 Mar. 2025) Cover Illustration by Sarah Jane Docker - VOTE HERE

Happy Voting! 

Mr. Ripley's Enchanted Books - Children's Book Cover Friendly Tussle - Round FIVE 2021/2022

Welcome to the 12th annual Children's Book Cover Friendly Tussle. (Previous winner HERE) We are looking once again to find your favourite book cover for 2021/2022. We do this to support the creative heroes of the children's book world; the illustrators and the creative teams behind all the books we love. Please share this exciting adventure with your friends and followers on social media. Everyone is welcome to vote and share the FUN with others. 

Mr. Ripley's Enchanted Book Cover Competition Rules 

There will be five weekly heats; each with Six books to vote for. Although, there will be 7 book covers in the final to vote for as heat winners will make the grand final plus two book covers as the highest runners up. 

Round One Winner: Hannah Gold - The Lost Whale - Book Cover Illustrated by Levi Pinfold

Round Two Winner: Michael Mann - Ghostcloud - Book Cover Illustrated by Chaaya Prabhat

Round Three Winner:  Alex Mullarky - The Sky Beneath the Stone - Book Cover Illustrated by Diana Renjina

Round Four Winner: Oanis Rawbone - Whippoorwill Lane - Book Cover Illustrated by Karl James Mountford 

Each week you vote you will be in with a chance to win an exciting prize.  This week's prize is a £10 National Book Token + a book and a bar of chocolate UK only) 

If you are interested all you need to do is:

• Vote for your favourite book cover using the poll HERE  (or at the bottom of the post)
• Leave a comment through this post/poll or #RT Pinned tweet on @Enchantedbooks or do both for a better chance to win.
• This poll will end on 14th December 2021 at Midnight (UK). 

Have fun and share with the world through Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. Watch the voting develop, and wait to hear whether you've won (once the poll has closed).

So here are the Six brilliant book covers to vote for this week: 

BOOK ONE: Julian Sedgwick - Tsunami Girl - Book Cover Illustrated by Chie Kutsuwada - Published by Guppy Books (4 Mar. 2021) - VOTE HERE

BOOK TWO: Tom Percival - The River - Book Cover Illustrated by Tom Percival - Published by Simon & Schuster Children's UK (3 Mar. 2022) - VOTE HERE 

BOOK THREE: Nicola Penfold - Between Sea and Sky - Book Cover Illustrated by Kate Forrester - Published by Stripes Publishing (8 July 2021) - VOTE HERE 

BOOK FOUR: Jakob Wegelius - The False Rose - Book Cover Illustrated by Jakob Wegelius - Published by Pushkin Children's Books (7 Oct. 2021) - VOTE HERE

BOOK FIVE: Kereen Getten - If You Read This - Book Cover Illustrated by Erik Davila - Published by  Delacorte Press (16 Aug. 2022) - VOTE HERE

BOOK SIX: Katie Cotton - The Secret of Splint Hall - Book Cover Illustrated by Becky Thorns - Book Published by Andersen Press (3 Mar. 2022) - VOTE HERE 

HAPPY VOTING!

Mr. Ripley's Enchanted Books - Children's Book Cover Friendly Tussle - Round FOUR 2021/2022

Welcome to the 12th annual Children's Book Cover Friendly Tussle. (Previous winner HERE) We are looking once again to find your favourite book cover for 2021/2022. We do this to support the creative heroes of the children's book world; the illustrators and the creative teams behind all the books we love. Please share this exciting adventure with your friends and followers on social media. Everyone is welcome to vote and share the FUN with others. 

Mr. Ripley's Enchanted Book Cover Competition Rules 

There will be five weekly heats; each with Six books to vote for. Although, there will be 7 book covers in the final to vote for as heat winners will make the grand final plus two book covers as the highest runners up. 

Round One Winner: Hannah Gold - The Lost Whale - Book Cover Illustrated by Levi Pinfold

Round Two Winner: Michael Mann - Ghostcloud - Book Cover Illustrated by Chaaya Prabhat

Round Three Winner:  Alex Mullarky - The Sky Beneath the Stone - Book Cover Illustrated by Diana Renjina

Each week you vote you will be in with a chance to win an exciting prize.  This week's prize is a £10 National Book Token + a book and a bar of chocolate UK only) 

If you are interested all you need to do is:

• Vote for your favourite book cover using the poll HERE  (or at the bottom of the post)
• Leave a comment through this post/poll or #RT Pinned tweet on @Enchantedbooks or do both for a better chance to win. 
• This poll will end on 5th December 2021 at Midnight (UK). 

Have fun and share with the world through Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. Watch the voting develop, and wait to hear whether you've won (once the poll has closed).

So here are the Six brilliant book covers to vote for this week: 

BOOK ONE: Thomas Taylor - Shadowghast (An Eerie-on-Sea Mystery) - Book Cover Illustrated by George Ermos - Published by Walker Books (2 Sept. 2021) - VOTE HERE 

BOOK TWO: Lindsy Littleson - The Rewilders - Book Cover Illustrated by Tatyana Komtsyan - Published by Pokey Hat (Cranachan) (3 Mar. 2022)  - VOTE HERE 

BOOK THREE: Darren Shan - Archibald Lox and the Forgotten Crypt - Book Cover Illustrated by Liam Fitzgerald (Frequency Design) - Published by Home of the Dammed Ltd. - VOTE HERE

BOOK FOUR: Oanis Rawbone - Whippoorwill Lane - Book Cover Illustrated by Karl James Mountford - Published by Buffalo Book Press (30 Sept. 2021) - VOTE HERE 

BOOK FIVE: Gabriela Houston - The Wind Child - Book Cover Illustration by Alexis Snell - Published by UCLan Publishing (3 Feb. 2022) - VOTE HERE

BOOK SIX: Christyne Morrell - Kingdom of Secrets - Book Cover Illustrated by Emma Cormarie and designed by Carol Ly - Published by Random House Inc (3 Aug. 2021) - VOTE HERE

HAPPY VOTING!

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.

Sarah Baker - Through the Mirror Door Book Cover - Concept Designed by Will Steele and Illustrated by Jessica Courtney-Tickle

This is one of my favourite book covers this year. It is from "Through the Mirror Door" which has been illustrated by the talented Jessica Courtney-Tickle. I recently read this book and really loved it; (review here) it got me thinking about having the right book cover image that reflects the story inside. The overall book cover is very important as it needs to attract potential buyers and make them pick up the book. It needs to appeal to as many readers as possible. This one encapsulates the story really well, in my opinion, and gives an air of mystery about the plot; gently tickling the brain into thinking about what is behind the cover. 

The above image and the two below are progress shots which were produced by the illustrator. 

This is the second progress illustration which shows a close up of the house from the first illustration. This is similar perspective to the final book cover.

This is a stripped back version of the above illustration. It is missing the character and a lot of the foreground detail. This allows the illustrator and Will Steele to begin to think about the positioning of the title and the layout of the final cover.

The above image shows a different colour palette in order to investigate which colours will work best for the final cover.

In the image above you will see the perspective has somewhat changed and the colour palette has transformed yet again fantastically. The tweaks and changes that have been applied might possibly be due to the partnership of Will Steele and the illustrator playing around with the concept of the image. It works really well for me as it is crisper, clearer and more focused and the colour palette works really well on this. 

This image shows a swirling calligraphic font which was probably disregarded as this was not used in the final selection.

This is the final version of the book cover. I hope that you agree with me that this is a fantastic final production. A lot of thought has obviously gone into the process of such an amazing cover and, in my opinion, it has definitely been worth it. 

If you love the illustrations as much as I do please check out other work by Jessica on her website here: http://jessica-tickle.squarespace.com

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MR RIPLEY'S ENCHANTED BOOKS: BOOK COVER REVEAL: NICK COOK - BREAKING STORM (Cloud Riders)

Here is the fantastic new book cover for Nick Cook's sequel to Cloud Riders. This is due to be released on the 14th October 2015 and will be published by Three Hares. It's a great clean cut and eye catching cover which should appeal to all potential readers, in my opinion. Here is my Book Review for Cloud Riders, which is the first book in the series, and also the guest post that Nick wrote entitled To the Moon and Beyond 


Book Synopsis: The storm clouds of destiny are tightening their fist and chasing after Dom and Angelique. They in turn are chasing after Jules, in a desperate attempt to rescue her from the clutches of Lord Ambra, as he whisks her away to Hells Couldron. Their journey takes them from the whispered secrets of Floating City, to the fiery terrors of Hells Cauldron. Dom learns how he must discover the legacy of an ancient race hidden within the heart of every single airship and help break their chains of slavery. But, above all, he must stop an ultimate weapon being developed, a weapon which threatens every free Earth across the dimensions. The key to everything is within Dom, but will he find the strength to overcome the terrible cost of this fight and cope with the ultimate betrayal, that may destroy him. Dom, will need every skill he has learned about being a Cloud Ride to face the coming storm…

Book Release date: 14th October 2015 

Marcus Alexander - Keeper of the Realms Book Cover Competition Spring 2015

Marcus Alexander is running a funky fresh competition to produce a one of a kind book cover for the Keeper of the Realms series. Your cover can have any image on the front and produced in anyway that you think best represents Charlie Keeper’s adventures in Bellania. But in order to win any of the truly funky prizes available it’s up to you to let loose both your passion and your creative flow in order to produce an epic book cover that let’s the world see how awesome your imagination is!



For full competition details please go to: http://whoischarliekeeper.com/book-co...

Imagination is King and I’ll always be game to champion it.

New Book Cover : Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone - J.K Rowling - Vote Original or New?

New Book Cover By Kazu Kibuishi - 

Vote here http://poll.fm/469yu

It's been 15 years since the Harry Potter books first cast a spell on readers, and Scholastic is celebrating the milestone by giving J.K. Rowling's books a new look.

The publisher revealed the new cover for "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" on Wednesday, the first of seven new covers that will appear on U.S. paperback editions of the books beginning in September to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the publication of the first book in the series.

The art for the new editions was created by artist Kazu Kibuishi, best known for his bestselling graphic novel series "Amulet." In a press release, Kibushi, described as a "longtime Harry Potter fan," called the opportunity to create new covers for the books "more than a little surreal."

He said: "As an author myself, I tried to answer the question, 'If I were the author of the books -- and they were like my own children -- how would I want them to be seen years from now?' When illustrating the covers, I tried to think of classic perennial paperback editions of famous novels and how those illustrations tend to feel. In a way, the project became a tribute to both Harry Potter and the literary classics."

Each of Kibushi's seven covers depict "a distinct and memorable moment" from that specific book. In the case of "Sorcerer's Stone," that moment is young Harry Potter walking with Hagrid down Diagon Alley.

The new versions of the books will be available as a box set in September.

                               

The original art for the series, created by Marie GrandPre, will continue to be featured on the U.S. hardcover and mass-market paperback editions, Scholastic said.