Alternate Giver
A quick entry. There has always been a lot of talk about the cover of Lois Lowry’s The Giver (). The rumor was that Lowry insisted the old man image be on the cover. A post on the Girls Who Draw blog linked to an interesting alternate cover drawing/design (you’ll have to go to the post to see it, and do check out her senior thesis for others!). There’s also an alternate jacket to Brave New World – one that, unlike The Giver, has had lots of different jacket art over the years.
I’ve been reading some articles about book covers (this will come up in future posts), many of which have discussed jacket art as advertising, as have I in several of my posts. Would this alternate cover sell more copies of The Giver? Or does it matter when it is a book that has won major awards?
UPDATE: Found The Giver in Vietnamese on Lois Lowry’s blog – see below]
ANOTHER UPDATE: I just saw the cover on the right – in English – in a bookstore in Connecticut!
May 2, 2008 at 5:11 pm
I read an interview with Lowry and found out that she’s a photographer — the one who photographed both the image on The Giver and the one on Number the Stars. I don’t know that she insisted (as an author, I don’t know how much “insisting” power you get, even when you’ve published thirty books in thirty years), but I think her photography was seen as good enough to be cover art, which is an enormous compliment — and hey, it also saved them having to pay cover fees to a model, eh?
I find it amazing how much of a ripple effect that book has had through the years.
May 2, 2008 at 11:20 pm
I know that authors seldom have a say, and it would seem unusual to say she insisted… still that was the folklore. It may not be so, but many people have said that the cover is a deterrent for kids. They don’t want to read a book about some old guy…..
May 3, 2008 at 8:05 pm
I love the alternate cover. I think it would generate renewed interest. Most kids really don’t care about awards, they just like a good cover. I know that the old cover has always kind of put me off.
May 8, 2008 at 3:26 am
Actually, that isn’t my favorite of her covers. I like the one she did for “Player Piano” best.
To be truthful, I’ve never read “The Giver” . . . I do like Lois Lowry. I’m not particularly drawn to the cover, but neither am I drawn to what I know of the story.
December 30, 2008 at 10:01 am
The Giver is one of my favorites!
I got a class set from a bookstore a couple of years ago. They didn’t have enough of the cover with the man so I ended up with about 5 of the alternate cover. I think I like the original best.