A Cover is Not the Book

Flying back from a Baltic Sea Cruise in May, I watched Mary Poppins Returns. I was struck by “A Cover is Not the Book,” a song that reminds us that we have to look inside to see what a book is really about. The central message is that you can’t judge people by superficial appearances and actions, but the lyrics are also true for books.

Look at the covers from different printings of Wuthering Heights. As you probably know, the main plot is Heathcliff’s jealousy and quest for revenge. Yes, there is a love story between Heathcliff and Catherine, but that is merely the backdrop for the primary one. The landscape is the wild English moor of the 18^th and early 19^th centuries, and there is nothing simple or idyllic about it. Neither is it moonlike. To me, none of these covers portray the contents of the book.

That isn’t an unusual fail, however. Most cover designers don’t read the book, and the author doesn’t always have approval rights over the design the publisher chooses.

But cover designs can fail even when they are within the author’s control. It happened with my middle-grade historical novel Desert Jewels. The book is about the Japanese-American incarceration during the first years of World War II, but after it was published I was told that the girl on the cover was Chinese rather than Japanese. Which only goes to prove the old adage . . .

You can’t judge a book by its cover.