Alternate Cover

For the back of our cover, we would include this summary: The Book Thief is the story of a young German girl, Leisel, caught in Nazi Germany during World War II. Death narrates the story, describing the times they meet and filling in the spaces in between. Death first encounters Leisel at the death of her brother, and then follows her through her experiences with her caring foster papa, her vocal foster mama, and the rest of her influential neighbors, one of which happens to be a hidden Jew in their basement. Her discovery of words through the patient teachings of her papa allows her to fall in love with reading, so that even stealing is not going too far in exchange for a new book. As Germany begins to feel the pangs of war, and these pangs become even more real on her street, Death inevitably encounters Leisel more times than anyone would wish on a teenage girl. This novel deals with the contradictions that display themselves through human nature, and speaks to the power of words both to destroy and to encourage.

I think the American cover design for The Book Thief is interesting and understated. So when I was thinking of how to create the alternate cover I thought the domino idea was quite good. However, I imagined Liesel at the forefront of any cover, clutching the book in which she writes her story. Behind her is Death, overlooking Himmel St. and its occupants; an image that reflects the larger plot scheme. In the sky, the clouds are drawn like a rope going into the sun; this is a reference to Max and Liesel’s paintings in the basement.

I believe the idea for the cover looked better in sketch form. My knowledge of indesign and photoshop is rather limited. Most of the color and font choices were consequences of the bottleneck effect (ie my ability)
combined with a general “feeling” about what colors best represented the story.

Overall, I think our alternate cover does represent The Book Thief, however, there are quite a few different covers, you can check them out here.