[HPforGrownups] Cover art questions

[Horst or Rebecca J. Bohner]

No: HPFGUIDX 17376

> (1) D'you think the wolfish dog on the back of PoA is meant to be
> Remus or Sirius?

I assumed it was Sirius / the Grim.  You're right about the book description
of Sirius's animagus form as "bear-like", but I don't blame the illustrator
for getting it wrong, because I had a more wolflike idea of Sirius in my own
mind as well.

> (2) What about the ghost on the back of GoF?  Too comical to be Nick,
> IMO, but too transparent to be Peeves.

Not the Friar, I suppose, with that ruff.  Nor Sir Cadogan, since the armour
is missing (and anyway it's the wrong book for him).  I'm afraid it's meant
to be Nick, too.  Can you believe I never thought about it before?  I had a
mental label on it as "Generic Ghost".

> (3) Is the person on the back of PS supposed to be any actual
> character, and if so, for heaven's sake who?

Now that one I can tell you with a certainty.  The illustrator never got to
read the book.  (And yes, this does happen a lot.  My favorite example is an
80's fantasy novel called CASTLE KIDNAPPED, which features a large blue
humanoid turtle on the cover.  The folks on the old FidoNet SF echo used to
call this the Frigging Blue Turtleoid, or FBT for short, in mingled
amusement and derision -- because there is absolutely no such creature to be
found *anywhere* in the novel.  I have no idea what the publishers were
thinking when they bought this particular piece of art, other than "We've
gotta have a cover and this might as well be it.")

Depending on the amount of information the PS illustrator was given (and it
can't have been much), this figure may be meant to be Dumbledore.  Minor
details such as a character's age and the colour of his hair often escape
the notice of those supplying information to illustrators.  (And sometimes
they escape the notice of the illustrators themselves, even if they have
read the book:  witness the number of anime pictures of Lee Jordan with
short blond hair, for instance.  I can only think that there is no Japanese
word for "dreadlocks".)
--
Rebecca J. Bohner
rebeccaj at pobox.com
http://home.golden.net/~rebeccaj