For my book cover redesign I choose one of my all time favorite books, The Giver by Lois Lowry. I have never been much of a reader until recently. I had read The Giver in high school and it story always seemed to stick with me. I recently revisited this story a few months ago for my Children’s Literature class and fell in love with it all over again. I seemed to understand it a lot more this time and it has now sparked a love of reading into me. The original cover shows “The Giver” an old man whose extraordinary ability allows him to hold the memories of the world prior to their utopian community. Previously “the Receiver” this man now little by little releases these memories to the new receiver; a twelve year old boy Jonas. Jonas is a very unique young man that gets noticed by the elders of the community because of his wisdom, bravery, strength, and that little something special. He begins to see the color red in his black and white community. Once he is decided to become the new Giver, Jonas soon receives memories from the receiver. His first memory, a pleasant one, is of sledding fast down a snowy hill, something neither Jonas nor anyone else has ever experienced in the community. But even though this memory is delightful Jonas soon finds out that not all memories are so pleasant.
For this cover I wanted to attach a little more of the story onto the cover. There is so much centered on the color of red, the snow, and cold. I used three separate photos in total. The sled is from Aunt Owee’s photo stream, the woods from johnmuk’s photostream, and the apple from Alberto_F’s photostream; all from www.flikr.com. I started with the edge of the book and wanted to keep it relatively simple. I knew I wanted to add the apple here; this is the first thing Jonas sees that changes. I used the quick selection tool and outlined the apple and then refined my selection to make the edges fine and not to bold. I then dragged it onto a white file and added a drop shadow with some noise to it to make it stand out. I also added a tiny drop shadow to the lettering as well. For the front cover I started with the sled and desaturated the image and then erased through the layer to allow the red to show. I then refined its edges to add it to the image of the forest. Meanwhile I changed my forest image into black and white, adjusting the colors to my liking. Once this was done a dragged my sled onto the image of the forest adjusted it and transformed it to match size and position to the trees. I also changed the opacity of this layer to give it a ghost or distant memory feel. The lettering has drop shadows, although the authors shadow is a bit more spread out. The title is larger but the opacity was changed as to blend with the image better.
( I just want to note I think the border that my blog post has made around my image throws the image off a bit)
References:
“Apple” Alberto_F.’s photostream. Web 26 March 2011. http://www.flickr.com/photos/albertof/with/5503888740/
Lowry, Lois. The Giver. Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1993. Print
“sledding” Aunt Owwees’s photostream. Web 26 March 2011. http://www.flickr.com/photos/aunto/with/5257647716/
Weinmann, Elaine, and Peter Lourekas. Photoshop CS5 for Windows and Macintosh. Berkeley: Peachpit Press, 2010.
“White Trees” johnmuk’s photostream. Web 26 March 2011. http://www.flickr.com/photos/jm999uk/with/2391615273/
