Book designers, bless them, really do like to put a bird on it. Following on from wild beasts and reptiles and amphibians, here is my latest post looking at animals on book covers, ‘Birds’:
Acceptance by Jeff VanderMeer; design by Charlotte Strick; Illustration by Eric Nyquist (FSG / September 2014)
Because I Love you by Barbara Toner; design by Sandy Cull / gogoGingko (Allen & Unwin / November 2012)
The Bedside Book of Birds by Graeme Gibson; design by Scott Richardson (Random House / October 2005)
The Bird Catcher by Laura Jacobs; design by LeeAnn Falciani (Picador / September 2010)
Birds Without Wings by Louis de Bernières; design by Matt Broughton (Vintage / April 2014)
Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb; design by David Mann (Allen Lane / May 2007)
A Box of Birds by Charles Fernyhough; design by Dan Mogford (Unbound / May 2013)
Cartwheel by Jennifer duBois; design by Lynn Buckley (Random House / September 2013)
Civil and Civic by Jonathan Bennett; design by David Gee (ECW / April 2011)
Come Late to the Love of Birds by Sandra Kasturi; design by Erik Mohr (Tightrope Books)
The Coincidence Authority by J. W. Ironmonger; design by Nathan Burton (Weidenfeld & Nicolson / September 2013)
The Crow’s Vow by Susan Briscoe; design by David Drummond (Vehicule Press / April 2011)
Darwin’s Finches edited by Kathleen Donohue; design by Matt Avery (University of Chicago Press / June 2011)
Don’t Let It End Like This Tell Them I Said Something by Paul Vermeersch; design by Natalie Olsen / Kisscut Design (ECW Press / October 2014)
The Dunwich Horror by H. P. Lovecraft; design by Coralie Bickford-Smith (Penguin Classics / October 2008)
Early Bird by Rodney Rothman; design by Paul Sahre (Simon & Schuster / April 2005)
Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm by Philip Pullman; design by Alison Forner (Penguin / November 2012)
Floating Like the Dead by Yasuko Thanh; design by Terri Nimmo (McClelland & Stewart / April 2012 )
Florence & Giles by John Harding; design by Jo Walker (Blue Door / March 2010)
Freedom by Jonathan Franzen; design by Charlotte Strick (FSG / December 2010)
The Galapagos by Henry Nicholls; design by Nicole Caputo (Basic Books / August 2014)
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt; design by Keith Hayes (Little, Brown & Co. / October 2013)
Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck; illustration by Kathryn McNaughton (Penguin / October 2011)
H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald; cover art by Christopher Wormell (Jonathan Cape / July 2014)
Grunt of the Minotaur by Robin Richardson; design by Emmanuel Polanco (Insomniac Press / October 2011)
A House in the Sky by Amanda Lindhout & Sara Corbett; design by Jennifer Heuer (Scribner / September 2013)
Hunger by Lan Samantha Chang; design by David High (W. W. Norton / September 2009)
Jenny and the Jaws of Life by Jincy Willett; design by Henry Sene Yee (Picador / June 2008)
Kansas City Lightning by Stanley Crouch; design by Milan Bozic (HarperCollins / March 2014)
Klauw van de valk by Wilbur Smith; design by Mark Ecob (Xander Uitgervers / unused)
Love & Hunger by Charlotte Wood; design by Sandy Cull /gogoGingko (Allen & Unwin / May 2012)
The Marabou Stork Nightmares by Irvine Welsh; design by Matt Broughton (Vintage / January 2009)
The Marrowbone Marble Company by Glenn Taylor; design by Allison Saltzman (Ecco / May 2010)
Morality for Beautiful Girls by Alexander McCall Smith; design by Mark Ecob (Abacus / December 2003)
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius; design by Emily Mahon; illustration by Yucel (Modern Library / August 2003)
The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham; illustration by Brian Cronin (Penguin / August 2008)
The Mind of a Thief by Patti Miller; design by Sandy Cull / gogoGingko; illustration by Cherie Strong (University of Queensland Press / October 2013)
Mink River by Brian Doyle; design by David Drummond (Oregon State University Press / October 2010)
Monstress by Lysley Tenorio; design by Alison Forner (Ecco / January 2012)
Naming Nature by Carol Kaesuk Yoon; design by Chin-Yee Lai (W. W. Norton / August 2009)
Never-Ending Birds by David Baker; design by Lynn Buckley; jacket illustration: Swallows by Audubon, The Granger Collection (W. W. Norton / October 2009)
News from the World by Paula Fox; design by Roberto De Vicq de Cumptich (W. W. Norton / May 2011)
The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin; design by Emily Mahon; illustration by Eleanor Grosch (Modern Library / August 1998)
Pigeon by Karen Solie; design by Bill Douglas (House of Anansi / June 2009)
Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman; design by Holly MacDonald (Bloomsbury / July 2011)
Romeo Spikes by Joanne Reay; design by Chris Sergio ( Gallery Books / August 2012)
Raven Girl by Audrey Niffenegger; design by Sara Corbett; illustration Audrey Niffenegger (Harry N. Abrams / May 2013)
Silent Land by Graham Joyce; design by Emily Mahon (Doubleday / March 2011)
Solo by Rana Dasgupta; design by Heads of State (Houghton Mifflin / February 2011)
Sweet Bird of Youth by Tennessee Williams; design by John Gall (New Directions / June 2010)
3 Elegies for Kosovo by Ismail Kadare; design by Matt Broughton (Vintage / May 2011)
To See Every Bird on Earth by Dan Koeppel; illustration by Mike Langman (Michael Joseph / August 2005) 1
Summer and Bird by Katherine Catmull; illustration by Jason Holley (Dutton / October 2012)
The Swan Gondola by Timothy Schaffert; design by Alex Merto (Riverhead / February 2014)
Treachery by S. J. Parris; design by Alexandra Allden, illustration by Daren Newman (Harper / August 2014)
The Virtues of Poetry by James Longenbach; design by Kimberly Glyder (Graywolf / March 2013)
The Vulture by Gil Scott-Heron; design by Stuart Bache (Canongate / July 2010)
Why is my Mother Getting a Tattoo? by Jancee Dunn; design by Catherine Casalino (Villard Books / June 2009)
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot by David Shafer; design by Charles Brock / Faceout Studios (Mulholland Books / August 2014)
Wizard of the Crow by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o; design by Peter Mendelsund (Pantheon / August 2006)
This is like my favorite thing today–thanks!
Thanks Jeff! I’m so glad you like it!
so many …. boggles the mind
See also: http://www.amazon.com/Dreaming-Up-America-Russell-Banks/dp/1583228381.
Great post, Dan. Here I am leaving one more bird. Illustrated by Pablo Delcan, designed by Sabrina Rinaldi @ Planeta. http://tinyurl.com/Aceptacion
Great list! Vintage’s edition of Lorrie Moore’s “Birds of America” (an obvious design choice, I guess) was one of the first ones I thought of.
For Flannery O’Connor, publishers and designers seem to favor bird motifs (especially peacocks).
This is a marvellous round-up!
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So pretty. Lots of corvidae but did I miss the magpies? When it came time to suggest images for a book cover it had to be magpies for me, gorgeous little rat-bats.
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Late to the party, but would love to suggest: Mordecai Richler’s ‘Solomon Gursky Was Here’. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/312029.Solomon_Gursky_Was_Here?ac=1
Thanks Jennifer. I don’t know who designed that cover. I will have to look out for it next time I’m in a bookstore!
Hi Dan. I have a different edition of Richler’s book, so I am not sure on the designer. sorry. This morning, I also came across another book for this collection: Kyo Maclear’s ‘The Letter Opener’ – similar pigeon to cover of Solie’s collection
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/821052.The_Letter_Opener?ac=1
Discovered this post, and your blog, later than sooner, but I want to thank you for this posting in particular. I love bird imagery, and crazy about book covers, so this one is a best-of-both-worlds to be sure!
– Ilana S.