September 22nd, 2016

Book Jackets Around the World: ‘The Only Child’ by Guojing

We've been incredibly busy this year selling foreign rights in Guojing's beautiful and heartwarming book 'The Only Child.' The book is now being published by her overseas publishers (there are still more language versions to be published in 2017) and we wanted to show you the various book jacket designs for it. Many share the original English language version image, but we have found it interesting to see the way different markets position the title.

The original English language title was published by Schwartz and Wade (Random House). It’s interesting to note that the title line was originally going to be in red and this was later changed to blue. You can see the red title from the early ARC below. I’ve also included a picture of the book as it appeared in its first English language edition in the wonderful Powell’s Bookstore of Portland, Oregon. After the book won the New York Times Best Illustrated Children’s Book award in 2015, the publisher added the seal to the jacket, which you can see in the third picture.

 

old-image powells gjamazon

Up next is the German language edition, which is published by Jacoby & Stuart. It’s interesting to see the positioning of the author’s name is now to the top left hand corner.

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Here we have V&R Editorias with their Portuguese language edition for the Brazilian market.

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The next book jacket is by French Canadian publisher Comme Des Geants. Readers here will see the title line has a different typeface.

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Next we have Guojing’s Spanish publisher, Pastel de Luna, (which means Mooncake in English). I’m showing the back of the book jacket here too. It’s interesting to see the use of red on the title line here. Pastel de Luna also chose to use another image from the book for their book jacket.  I really love the way the design flows across both sides of the jacket.

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The Simplified Chinese language version, published by Citic in mainland China, features another image on the jacket. You can also see The New York Times Best Illustrated Children’s Book of 2015 award seal. Below, it is on proud display in a bookstore in Suzhou City, Jiangsu Province.

china-cover gj-suzhou-city

Here we have the Korean edition of the book, published by Media Changbi Inc. You can see The New York Times Best Illustrated Children’s Book of 2015 gold seal on the front here.

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And finally, the Taiwanese edition for Complex Chinese language readers, published by China Times Publishing. You can see the English language edition on the left and the Taiwanese edition on the right. The Taiwanese publisher has added some of the awards the book has won to the book jacket.

taiwan-cover2

Hope you found this interesting!

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