In which Claire Mabey judges this year’s New Zealand books by their covers.
Among a sea of books some are more alluring than others, like tropical fishes glinting. The art of the book cover is a serious matter: the cover has to help the book stand out as well as allow it to sit fluidly inside its genre; it’s got to tell the reader clearly what it is, as well as what it promises. A book cover has to have an atmosphere: it has to distil the vaster story into one perfectly balanced dance of image and text.
A key takeaway from this list is that Todd Atticus, formerly of Te Herenga Waka University Press, is a spectacular book cover designer.
Here are your best New Zealand book covers of 2024:
At the Grand Glacier Hotel by Laurence Fearnley (Penguin NZ); cover design by Cat Taylor
Here’s a book that knows about perspective. Fearnley’s cover gives the drone’s eye view of a hotel nestled against a glacier and its mountain. There are map lines and a distinctly vintage atmosphere (the image is from this 1932 poster of Franz Josef Glacier). The text is large, bold and snowy. The font gives us a jaunty R that adds movement and quirk. A stunning, eye-catching, soaring cover that says: “Pack your bags, you’ve scored yourself a weekend at the Grand Glacier Hotel. Expect and old-timey feel, solipsism, and the sound of ice cracking.”
Brown Bird by Jane Arthur (Penguin NZ); cover illustration by Devon Smith, cover designed by Cat Taylor
Yellow! Why aren’t more book covers utilising this colour of sunshine, halos, lemons and dehydration? I want a framed poster of Brown Bird. Devon Smith’s sensitive illustration of a mousey-haired girl with lilac specs, blushing cheeks, an 80-style stripy tee, freckles and a brown bird a-perch on her noggin, is so sweet, so summery I want to visit her. The vivid, hand-drawn lettering for the title is perfectly vast – written across the lemon sky. The author’s name is written in comforting, familiar cursive: like the signature on a letter. Everything about this cover says: “Here’s me, welcome to my sunny garden. Ask me why there’s a brown bird on my head. I’ll be embarrassed at first, but I think we might get along.”
Future Jaw-Clap: The Primitive Art Group and the Braille Collective Story by Daniel Beban (Te Herenga Waka University Press); cover design by Carla Schollum
Trippy. The psychedelic blend of pale yellow, lilac, green and orange. The phantasm of the roaring werewolf in the centre. The musicians peering down at us with their horny instruments. There is no doubting that if you are lured in by this cover you will find something niche, experimental, mind-altering. The font is both monumental and alarming: the spiky W and M and N are conspicuous, piercing against the swirly, muted colours. This cover is altogether compelling, charming: it murmurs, “come play little music, roar a little roar, take a little trip.”
In the Half Light of a Dying Day by C.K. Stead (Auckland University Press); cover design by Duncan Munro
When this book crossed my desk earlier in the year I started stroking the cover and couldn’t stop. What you don’t know from the digital image is that the cicadas are embossed and so is the text. The azure blue of the pair of cicadas – the tracing of their fine, skeletal wings – glows against the deep navy. The bold burnt orange text, in all caps, is monumental. The font (which repeats inside: all poem titles are in all-caps, too) is striking: like masonry, banged into stone. Altogether a striking, tactile, confident cover that drew me entirely in. This book demands that you to answer it: what happens in the half light of a dying day?
Piki te Ora: Your Wellbeing Journal by Hira Nathan and Jessie Eyre (Allen & Unwin); illustrations by Huriana Kopeke-Te Aho and cover design by Megan Van Staden
Huriana Kopeke-Te Aho’s art work is so striking and bright that this book gives the promise of beauty and vigour from the outside in. The rainbow colour scheme is immediately appealing to younger people (the target audience); it gives positivity, optimism, hours of cathartic colouring in. The promise of the cover is delivered through the generous, bountiful pages within. The cover of Piki te Ora says: “Come on in, whānau. Kick off your shoes and your existential dread and start dreaming.”
Plastic by Stacey Teague (Te Herenga Waka University Press); cover illustration by Sarah McNeil, cover design by Todd Atticus
A little girl sits in a garden, her arm around a shaggy-coated dog. The colour scheme is ochre and cream. The perspective is whack: a kōwhai flower is big as the dog’s head, kawakawa berries too. This is a dreamlike impression of childhood: the classic image of a kid in a garden with her best canine friend. The sepia colours evoke memory: an old photograph turned into the scratchy, sketchy impression. The larger than life garden, the way the plants protect the figures in the middle, is the opposite of plastic. So the title is pleasingly curious. What is the plastic in this image, in this book? This is the perfect cover to illustrate a collection of poems that are deeply autobiographical, that celebrate memory and the excavation of them.
Poorhara by Michelle Rahurahu (Te Herenga Waka University Press); cover designed by Todd Atticus
The scratchy aesthetic of this powerful cover lies somewhere between the woodcut and that thing you do when you’re a kid where you scratch away the black crayon to reveal the colour underneath. Poorhara is bold, bold, bold: the purple, aquamarine and frog-green squiggles are alive, like worms or river weeds, curling suggestively over the title text that is falling down the side of the page. or being pulled down. A huge 20-cent coin dominates the space, letting us see the artwork etched upon it: the hei tiki, intricately etched, a large figure with two children on their lap in a safe embrace. There’s chaos and danger here, but there’s also a home and a sense of protection. It says, “pile up your silver coins and spend some hectic time on me.”
Take Me to Your Leader by Leonie Agnew (Penguin NZ); illustrations by Paul Beavis, cover design by Carla Sy
Children’s book covers have a lot of work to do. They have to appeal to their target audience as well as to the person buying the book (mostly, some form of adult); they have to pull of the stunt of appearing entirely fresh while looking a lot like the kind of story the book-seeker has just finished and is desperate for more of. Leonie Agnew’s Take Me to Your Leader leapt out at me all year. It’s the vivid, alien green; it’s the aghast expression of the kid being beamed up (illustrated by Paul Beavis, famously great); it’s in the bubbles and the dog. But did it appeal to my six and a half year old? Here’s what he said: “Yes, I want to read that. What is happening to that boy?” Job done.
The Chthonic Cycle by Una Cruickshank (Te Herenga Waka University Press); cover illustration by Sasha Francis, cover design by Todd Atticus
Ahhh! Freaky nature! That’s what Sasha Francis’ mesmerising cover collage for Cruickshank’s mesmerising collection of essays says to me. Any book cover that manages to include foxgloves, cut gems, and the set from City Slickers can’t not be on this list. There is a frantic collision here: it’s floral, it’s volcanic, it’s dainty, it’s gigantic. The crisp white lettering for the title and author’s name is pleasingly clean against the colourful backdrop; the text is also mechanical in the way the natural elements of the collage are not. Here is a cover that says: “Nature is goddamn crazed. Journey with me to seek out the bold, the beautiful and the bizarre.”
Whaea Blue by Talia Marshall (Te Herenga Waka University Press); cover design by Todd Atticus
Whaea Blue’s cover is a photo of the author herself with the title overlaid in the upper lefthand corner, and the author’s name on the lower right. The photo, you can tell, is old school, printed out: there are white lines and patches all over it where the coloured layer has been crumpled off where it’s been folded, or screwed up. The person that emerges, her back to us, her face in profile, wearing a white dress that mirrors the white patches of damage, is stunning. The font of the text is curvy, bold: the white of the title pulls out the flaws, and the dress, lets the red lipstick sing. The black text of the author’s name pulls out the hair piled up, the magnificent eyebrow, the shadow. This is glamour, a complicated chic, it says: “Who is that girl? Would she talk to me if I approached her at the ball? Or would she keep turning all the way… read to find out.”