I mentioned a few months ago the strange, initial paperback edition of The Treasure of Alpheus Winterborn (Bantam Skylark, 1980). Yes, yes, the cover, the cover. That’s not the only oddity with the artwork. As you flip through the pages, you’ll soon discover the full-page interior illustrations by Judith Gwyn Brown are black-and-white reversed. The above image is of the frontispiece.
Its...nice...in its own way, and – oh, who am I kidding? It’s not nice. It’s a distraction. It looks wrong because it is wrong. The images appear correct in the original 1978 hardcover edition, so what happened here? Is this a common issue? Why don’t you see it in more books? Would this been corrected for later printings of this editions, or would the powers-that-be said, “eh”, and left it as is?
No other Bellairsian books have surfaced with this feature, but I’m curious if others know other books with a similar issue.
2 comments:
While I seem to remember seeing at least one other book that had images in a negative format like this, I could not give a title to the book. I have seen and handled very many books over the years and I can't remember seeing many books done this way.
The Green Knowe books by L. M. Boston were illustrated by her son, Peter Boston, and several of them used negative images to great effect. It was on purpose, though. You can see them by googling his name and 'Green Knowe.'
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