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Akemi Dawn Bowman’s ‘Harley In The Sky’
This golden, shining cover is wrapped around Akemi Dawn Bowman’s latest work of fiction, following on from the bestselling ‘Starfish’ and ‘Summer Bird Blue’, both multi-accolade-winning novels in the Young Adult Fiction world.
I already knew about Akemi’s books as their covers are the sort that seem to have existed forever in my line of sight; popping up on ‘best book’ and ‘great read’ lists and on the myriad publishing news emails I sign up to. So when I realised THAT’S whose book I was about to illustrate, I knew it had to be…
…well, different from those. This was a different story, not linked; new characters and settings.
And by a different illustrator!
I started where I usually start, by reading the manuscript. Always feeling like a giant skive — reading books during the work day? Someone’s going to grass me up any minute — this is the single most important thing I can do before starting a cover.
And I was gripped.
~ † ~
It’s a risky strategy, reading the book rather than opting for a neat summary with key points provided by the editor. You might not actually like the book, in which case you can approach the book more objectively and pick out the key elements that could inform your cover in a rather workmanlike way. You might like the story but not the main characters (let’s be honest, just like in real life, you can’t like EVERYONE…
