June 23, 2016 
Erin 
One of my favorite things to do is to go into a book store and judge book covers. “Gasp! No! This is something you should never do,” you may be thinking. But I think there’s actually merit in appreciating and critiquing the artworks that decorate books. That doesn’t mean I’m judging the writing, though.
The cover of a book is a work of art. There are artists involved in this process, and a lot of time and effort from many different people goes into making them just right. So if you’re not appreciating them or looking at them critically, you’re basically saying that all that effort is a waste of time. In my opinion, going into a bookstore is like going into a museum full of paintings. You may not love or understand every work of art, but you should appreciate its existence.
Here’s a blog that I love. It takes the covers of books and shows how absolutely beautiful they can be.
And here’s an article that shows some truly gorgeous book covers like this one:
http://drinkmicro.com/25-beautiful-book-covers/
These covers can enrich your home as much as they can your mind. Covers are just one more wonderful thing to love about books!
What are your favorite book covers?
Many thanks for this, Erin, and I just love those 25 Beautiful Cover examples through the link. I find that the cover of And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda by Eric Bogle illustrated by Bruce Whatley, and published as a children’s book by Allen and Unwin in 2015, as haunting as Eric’s song that always tugs at the heart strings as the optimism of troops leaving for WW1 Gallipoli turns to bloodshed and tears, and the crippled, the wounded and the maimed return home. (The song is available on iTunes.) Bruce Whatley’s emotion-charged cover art and illustrations help to increase our appreciation of the heroics and suffering of those who fought. They are not simply an addition, or extra layer, but are so solidly bound to the words that whenever the song is heard, I think it will always conjure a vision of Bruce’s interpretation.
An image of the cover can be viewed at http://bit.ly/28TItrC or put ‘And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda Allen and Unwin’ into an image search and you will also see some of the internal illustrations.
Though Bruce, who I have met, has illustrated many books using his dominant right hand, he instantly chose to dawn all the illustrations for this book with his left hand, which he finds can give a more expressive portrayal of emotions. For me, the slightly fragmented nature or ‘wiggliness’ of some dawn lines also highlights the fragility of the human body and the precarious situation faced by all service people on a battlefield.
The small things of the cover add together to become a big thing — the fabric-feel, the deeply debossed lettering indented into the surface and the art as a foretaste of what we will discover on the pages. The design is a lesson in itself for would-be illustrators. The action takes place from left to right, as we normally read text, and the main character soldier stares towards us and draws us in to his situation in a narrow trench. We are forced to make eye contact with him by the position of his eyes on the cover — at an intersection of lines that could be drawn a third of the way across from a side, and a third of the height of the picture — and many lines in the drawing lead our eyes to his, such as the sloping hillside horizon, the edges of boulders and the cleft in the trench wall. Is the soldier warning us to stay away from the danger to be faced and the sights he is likely to see, reflecting on the futility of war and loss of life, or asking us to join him in the story and support him in action, as a mate? We know we must stay with him through thick and thin. Masterful!