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Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Hamlet

Design by W.H. Chong

Something tells me the young adults at which John Marsden's contemporary novelization of Hamlet is aimed -- even (especially?) those who agree with the mighty Couch Flambeau ("I hate Shakespeare / He's too hard to read / I wish he were dead / Oh, he is?") -- might give the Bard another shot when they see this. Yes, the placement of "a novel" is pretty horrible. But if you're a 13-year-old, do you care?

7 comments:

Ian Koviak said...

wow. very fucking nice. It would be nice to see this along side all the other good Hamlet covers out there.

Shawna said...

HAH! Clever and eye-catching.

I don't think we should encourage the 13 year olds to continue with that mindset, though. They just need to be educated the right way about Shakespeare, have a little extra free time on their hands to decipher the bard, and life will be wonderful and oh-so-informed.

Shawna's Study Abroad

W.H. Chong said...

A friend told me you had the cover up -- I'm the designer at Text Publishing (Australia). I wanted to leave the top blank and where else to put that annoying appendage: "A Novel"? Incidentally, this won the YA cover design award here just a couple of weeks ago. Regards, W.H. Chong. PS: Our place is www.textpublishing.com.au

W.H. Chong said...

Just by the by, an upcoming cover -- for the new novel by rocker Nick Cave -- has occasioned a literary blog post prompting a barrage of attacking and defending comments. Is the image offensive, sexist? (The photographer is Polly Borland.) You be the judge: http://www.meanjin.com.au/spike-the-meanjin-blog/post/the-australian-cover-of-the-death-of-bunny-munro/

Joseph said...

WH: thanks for a great cover, and wow...that Cave post is great. Pointing to it in 3,2,1...

W.H. Chong said...

Re: Nick Cave cover. Joseph, pardon me, don't mean to be conducting this sort of conversation here. But someone asked about the other covers -- the UK Nick Cave is by gray318, who does quite a bit for Canongate UK. Don't know who did the US version. But you gotta say, in this instance, the Aussies are a lot more adventurous.

Anonymous said...

New header, nice.