I guess because it is a classic it needs the modern art cover? Or does someone think this will make the book appeal to children because there is a doll on it? The blurb from the blog is a bunch of pretentious bullshit.
It needs this cover because otherwise how would a reprinting of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory get column inches?
Wait, is that meant to be Veruca Salt? Maybe there’s a different cover for each of the six or seven kids… but still a great big WTF.
A Veruca Salt cover would need to have a squirrel hiding in it somewhere.
When I first saw the new cover, the first thing I thought was: so where are the covers for the other bratty kids? However, just having a cover with Veruca doesn’t make much sense, while having several different covers reeks of a useless “collectable set” for the sake of sales.
This is some kind of weird Worth1000 shoop, right? Everything about it is wrong, wrong, wrong. I cannot imagine the famously cantankerous Dahl approving of this travesty.
I’m upset by this, as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was the first book I read “by myself” as a child. To the best of my knowledge, I’ve read everything he wrote. I still need to make a pilgrimage to his grave.
I repeat. This is wrong.
What’s very strange is that they claim that it is not supposed to be Veruca Salt. In which case, why is there some random creepy image of a child on the cover? If it was supposed to be Veruca Salt, still extremely weird and creepy, but if it isn’t supposed to be her? Then we are really in the WTF territory.
Yknow, I went back and read the blurb again, and it doesn’t actually say this is the actual book cover. I wonder if it’s just somebody’s mockup, and the back cover is all lorem ipsum?
This is just a ruse to get some publicity. I first thought it must be a new edition of Lolita.
Put a monkey on the cover…
Who is John Galt?
I’m thinking this is a crop of one small section of the actual cover art. Penguin Modern Classics use their titles as one element of the cover, and the blurb references “children”, so I expect the actual art will have a lot more going on than a single creepy doll-girl.
What??
This looks like the whole thing to me.
Oh lordy. Nevermind then! That’s… awful.
I don’t really get why people are getting in such a flap about it, you can still get one with Quentin Blake illustrations if you don’t like weird ass metaphors and photography. Also, honestly, was buying a copy of this book really on anyone’s list of things to do this week? “Now my plans are scuppered because I have a negative opinion of the picture on the front!”. Actually I’m now tempted to buy a copy even though I already have it and don’t ever read it and would sooner put the film on cos it’s got the “I’ve got a golden ticket” song, plus the true origin story of The Candyman. I’d just want it really to show to the younglings of my family one day and say “people got upset about this once, what a bunch of wallies”.
This furore reminds me of that advert in which a bunch of giant grinning
heads were bouncing across the countryside and it upset a bunch of grown ass adults so they got it pulled because they found it terrifying. They weren’t real heads, they were just a special effect.
There’s quite a large difference between being truly upset or enraged by something like this and simply thinking “christ, that’s a poor choice of cover image”. I think most people are in the latter camp. It’s ok, we’re allowed to say if we’re not a fan of its design.
That is totally cool and fine and very acceptable.
I am personally quite interested to see how all the other Dahl books would look with this sort of cover, I expect (or hope) there is a photoshop thread going on somewhere addressing this.
What bothers me about the cover is that it’s almost a great idea, but fumbles. A creepy/weird cover is completely appropriate for Dahl’s weird & creepy books, so some iconic scene from the book photographed like this would be great: Violet becoming a blueberry, Willy Wonka being crazy, Veruca grabbing a squirrel, etc. But when even folks who’ve read the book a thousand times have no idea what this is supposed to portray, it’s not working.
I’d love to see a Lynchian photo like this of a kid hanging out with insects, a boy being turned into a mouse, or a kid brewing up marvelous medicine. The style is great.
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