Here are the covers for Day Boy and The Stone Road, art by Qistina Khalidah, and design by Dana Li. I could look at these for hours.
The books talk to each other in so many ways; structurally; the ways the characters are focused on their individual communities; and the different wildernesses inside their hearts. These covers do the same.
I've had some wonderful cover art over the years, but I think these might be my favourites.
The detail in the leaves of the Stone Road, the kind of unformed nature of the background of the Day Boy cover (Mark is unformed, the book is the shaping of him). Mark looking towards the reader (defying them to pick holes in what he is saying), Jean looking away (as though she is going to lead you through the story and down the Stone Road), they communicate things that I hope the books do as well.
There are all sorts of ambiguities.
Fantasy is my great literary love. I guess, quieter, inward looking fantasy with a thread of shadow. And these two books of small towns, monsters, and the battles of the heart, and the quiet, gentle (but often inwardly epic, or epically silly, or heartbreakingly sad) moments of a life are so well served by this art. Everything I know and feel about growing up is in these books, the confusions and clarities (mostly confusions, but the clarities when they come are so sweet).
Jean and Mark have been such a large part of my life, I'm so glad they have been given covers as lovely as these in which to talk to each other.
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