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A space opera with lots of commercial appeal, adventure, and a passionate love affair. This was an incredible cover to create. The green dress, which I helped to design and have custom made, is the central focal point of our marketing campaign. For the cover, I knew I wanted the characters to reenact the key falling scene in the book when they are hurtled from the ship and free-fall through space to create impact and movement. The zero-gravity shoot involved a trampoline, ladder, crash pads, and two really brave models!

The follow-up book to These Broken Stars, with a similar plot but a different setting, characters, and political conflict at the heart of the story. The jumpsuit, which is going on tour with the authors, was custom-made and based on my design. We shot this cover at a movie stunt studio with direction from a Hollywood stunt trainer involving the biggest trampoline I have ever seen. 

This is the paperback repackage design. My original vision for the cover was very conceptual, and I was inspired by the cover of Prep -- super preppy, lots of pinks and light greens, Ultimately the author wanted to go with more of a scene. I found this image on a blog about all things preppy, and after three months I was able to track down the original photographer. It was a wild goose chase but we ended up getting the photo for a steal!

Tangled Webs is about a 16-year-old girl who survives the gritty streets in 18th-century London by masquerading as a mysterious and seductive blackmailer who gets caught in a dangerous love triangle. It's a sultry, fun read. For the first few covers, I focused on showing the girl in different scenes, but they didn't feel striking enough. So I started exploring conceptual covers and kept coming back to lace imagery as a way to  capture the drama, beauty, and intricacy of the story. I knew lace had to be the concept for the cover, yet it needed to be balanced with some grittiness, which his where the tattered edges and grimy cobblestone background come in. We've gotten really great feedback about how unique this cover is and how it pops off the shelf. The lace art will wrap around the entire jacket. 

Part romance, part thriller, Far From You delves into the emotions of a girl recovering from drug addiction and grief, all wrapped up in a mystery. I was tasked to create a cover under a very tight deadline that captured the darkness of the cover in a very simple way.

I was tasked to design a very distinctive cover for Tamara Ireland Stone's new breakout novel, Every Last Word. The book is about a teen girl struggling with a rare form of OCD who discovers that writing is the one thing that might save her. For the cover, I wanted to pay homage to the act of writing as her way of finding peace in her life. The pieces of paper tie into the number three, which the main character obsessively counts.

This is the Printz Honor book set during World War II’s Nazi invasion starring two best friends whose bond is put to the ultimate test when faced with unthinkable circumstances. For the paperback repackage cover, we wanted a softer, more commercial look. The two bikes represent the unbreakable friendship at the heart of the story set against a pastoral backdrop, with a subtle threat of planes flying above. 

This is our third book by bestselling author Elizabeth Wein, a stand-alone novel set in 1930s Ethiopia about a brother and sister’s unbreakable bond. For the cover, the goal was to capture the beauty of the Ethiopian landscape while referencing the strong bond between two siblings. Flying is a central theme in the book, but I wanted the plane to be a bit more subtle than Code Name Verity. I love the way it interacts with the type.

This is the paperback repackage cover, and the composition purposefully mimics the companion novel Code Name Verity’s paperback cover, yet a little more abstract. Again, the plane is a subtle element that you don’t necessarily see right away.    

The original hardcover cover of the World War II companion novel to Code Name Verity. A more accurate depiction of the concentration camp where the main characters are imprisoned. I softened the harshness of the gate with the red scarf. Again, two planes represent the friendship.

A sci-fi thriller about a girl who is human-extraterrestrial hybrid and her race to escape the evil geneticists who created her. I wanted the cover to have a sci-fi look, yet still feel soft and romantic. She has one blue eye and one black eye, which you don't necessarily notice right away, but is the nod to her alien-human genetic makeup. I based the pose on an iconic image from The Great Gatsby (remake). 

A time-travel romance by Tamara Ireland Stone. Sales, Marketing, and Editorial wanted a super commercial, beautiful and romantic cover. We shot this on Coney Island on a frigid winter day. The goal was to create a cover that was all about the main character, with the romance element hinted at in a very simple way. 

The follow up to Time Between Us. Again -- a very commercial, romantic, dreamy cover. We shot this in Prospect Park on a perfect fall day. So many of the shots were beautiful, but there were only a handful that captured that magical and golden late afternoon glow of fall.

A Victorian-era middle grade adventure starring a young chimney sweep who stumbles into the “Odditorium”, an anthropomorphic building with a supernatural stock of magical and mythical characters and magical objects. After considering several more traditional illustrated cover ideas, we ultimately decided to do something that we hadn’t seen before on a middle grade cover: a paper sculpture. The model, created by a paper sculptor in the UK, is as intricate and fantastical as the story and took three months to construct. I corresponded with the sculptor frequently and provided intensive art direction to help bring the scene to life.

A middle grade novel by breakout author Kirsten Hubbard about a boy who is struggling to break free from his survivalist step-father and save his family. The writing is exceptional and the story is very strange, so I wanted the cover to be really different. The kids in the story play a game called World Building, in which they build model houses and towns. The bird and the bike are significant in the story. We commissioned the model to be built and shot, and now it is on display in our office. 

The paperback repackage of the middle grade novel by bestselling author Eoin Colffer. Once my concept was approved, Owen Richardson was the obvious choice for the cover illustration, and I think he knocked it out of the ballpark. 

An upper middle grade about a girl who is trapped in a boy’s body. Her transition from male to female is the epicenter of the story, and I wanted the cover to depict that. After trying out lots of different concepts, late one night I created a sketch of Grayson's boy’s t-shirt transitioning to a feminine shape. I love this cover.

A sweet and commercial middle grade chapter book with the following ingredients: a beach vacation, a misbehaving blender, a mischievous little brother, and a wedding. I created the series logo with confection and baked goods in mind. Illustrations are by newcomer Brooke Bointon Hughes. The cover has been so embraced that we signed up a second and third book in the series. 

The adorable follow-up to book 1!
 

A middle grade adventure based on Peter Pan by best-selling authors Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson. Cover illustration is by Greg Call under my art direction with my title branding. We chose an action-packed chase scene to make the cover jump off the shelves. 

This is a twist on the traditional Mother Goose tale, except this one stars a grumpy bear who reluctantly becomes the "Mama" of four abandoned goslings. The illustrations by Ryan Higgins are adorable and hilarious. 

A stunning picture book by David Teague and Antoinette Portis about a young boy who follows a red hat when it is taken by the wind and finds his true love. There are wild specs on this book: 5th color red and spot UV on the interior and jacket. I worked hand in hand with our production manager, the printer, and Antoinette to coordinate all the complicated spec layers. 

An inspiring picture book by Brian Pinkney about a young soccer player who follows his imagination and learns to stay focused, even when things get a little overwhelming. This was really fun to design. Brian has that wonderful swirly style to his art so my type design mimics those curves. 

A holiday picture book about the story of Hanukah. The mixed-media illustrations were a few years in the making, and the result is incredible. With the market filled with picture books about Christmas, I was happy to be able to design a heartwarming story about Hanukah. 

The breakout picture book by animator Cale Atkinson. Cale is a newcomer to picture books, so working with him involved a lot of art direction during sketches through finishes. We used fifth color orange throughout and I used spot UV on the cover to create the illusion of water.

Murphy has a case of the heebee jeebies and tries any excuse not to go to school. The illustrations by Brendan Murphy are adorable and wonderfully graphic. There are lots of fantastic interior scenes with clever cropping, which is what inspired the cover. 

A picture book about a spunky princess who is tired of waiting for her prince so she sets out to find one herself. The first cover featured a very happy Princess Patty with a nondescript smile, which we felt didn’t convey her personality. So I felt we needed to add the sheepish prince and change Patty’s expression and body position to reflect her independent spirit. The original title was “Princess Patty,” but at my suggestion we added “Meets Her Match” to give it a little more punch There is glitter galore on this cover.

A charming picture book about friendship and mistaken identity. This was a new, simpler, art style for Sergio Ruzzier that I was really taken with. For the interior I chose the chunky “Telegraph” font, so it stands up against the thick black outline in the art. I created the series logo.

The follow-up to the beloved Spoon about a pair of chopsticks who have to learn to do things on their own after one of them breaks in half during a karate move. I used Filosofia for the interior, which complements the font in Spoon yet isn’t the same.

A hilarious counting book for older picture book readers by the very talented Mac Barnett and Kevin Cornell. The book stars several animals, so we knew we wanted to show more than one on the cover. The solution was to make the focus on the title with the animals interacting with the type.

A girl transforms into a super-hero princess at night. I didn’t want to depict the typical beautiful, shrinking violet princess on the cover, so we made sure the illustration captured her spunk and bravery. There is lots of glitter on this cover!

Another hilarious picture book collaboration by Mac Barnett and Kevin Cornell about a prince whose vanity nearly causes the downfall of his kingdom, if not for his savvy subjects. This cover concept was obvious to us, and Kevin pulled it off seamlessly. 

A bedtime book about a young boy who sooths grumpy dragons with hot chocolate. I loved designing this book -- Pascal Lemaitre’s illustrations are magical and they marry with the lyrical text beautifully. We had Pascal base the cover art on one of the endearing interior pieces.

A slapstick story about the unlikely friendship between two type-A ducks and a careless but loveable moose. The only text in the book is “Duck, Duck, Moose”, so I kept the type a little quirky and friendly. I think the cover perfectly and simply depicts the dynamic between disastrous Moose and his straight-laced friends.

A sweet picture book about a busy elephant pastry chef who nearly misses her own birthday if not for her loyal mice friends. I have always loved Betsy Lewin’s illustrations, so it was a dream to work with her. After trying different options for title type, I ultimately felt that hiring a hand letterer would give us just the right feel.

This is a collaboration between wife and husband team Andrea Davis Pinkney and Brian Pinkney, chronicling the lives of ten African American throughout history, from Booker T. Washington to Barack Obama. It is the definitive volume on the subject for young people. It's very lengthy -- over 200 pages, and I wanted to be sure the interior design was accessible to elementary school students, so the text is broken up by lots of imagery and design elements. The first cover we tried was a full-bleed portrait of three of the men, but it felt very traditional. I wanted to try a more sophisticated, design-ey approach that also could have cross-over appeal. This book won the Coretta Scott King Award. I was so honored to have been a part of such an acclaimed book for young people.