Puffin Magic II

Having very much enjoyed Puffin by Design (see here), I am very keen to see, in physical form, these upcoming Puffin Designer Classics, released to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the children's publishing imprint. These six books, each designed by major artists,architects and designers, are rather beautiful. The only downside is that, at the price of £100, and as limited editions, you wouldn't dare let kids anywhere near them.

They are:

Little Women by fashion designer Orla Kiely,

Oliver Twist by artist Sir Peter Blake (see more of his cover work here),

  
Treasure Island by architect and sculptor Frank Gehry,

 and my favourites, Around the World in Eighty Days by architect David Adjaye,

James and the Giant Peach by sculptor Antony Gormley,

and The Secret Garden by author and illustrator Lauren Child (a really nice use of layers here, though presumably this will make the book fairly fragile). Says she: "I thought it would be interesting to do a cover where one could peel back the paper layers, one by one until the garden and the girl are revealed - it was just a nice way to conjure the secretness of the garden."

(Click for much bigger images)

Peter Blake's 1950s Penguins

In another of Penguin's apparently never-ending anniversary celebrations, the UK arm is releasing the Penguin Decades in April: "Five seminal novels from each decade from the 1950s to 1980s inclusive, with cover artwork by high-profile artists and designers." Given that this is for their 75th anniversary, the number of books and the timespan seems fairly arbitrary, but that doesn't really matter.

As far as I can tell, each the covers of the books for each decade will be era-appropriate. To this end, they've commissioned famous pop artist Peter Blake to do the covers for the 1950s books (Scenes from Provincial Life by William Cooper, Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis,  From Russia with Love by Ian Fleming, Billy Liar by Keith Waterhouse, and Memento Mori by Muriel Spark). I've found all the covers but the Waterhouse, so here they are.

 

 

 

Whatever Billy Liar ends up looking like, it is about time it had a facelift. The current Penguin edition (and the copy I have) is incredibly '80s-looking...

 

..though I am partial to these two older Penguin editions...

 

I'll put up the covers to the other decades as I get hold of them.