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Psychedelic imagery is honestly pretty appropriate for this book, though. On a side note, it’s interesting that Wonka is invariably depicted as skinny, despite the fact that he presumably eats a lot of candy. Wonka looks dangerously unhinged (accurate!) and Charlie appears to be doing some sort of shuffle-dance in his pajamas. Unfortunately I couldn’t find a better scan of this particular bit of unbridled lunacy. I would be curious to know why Charlie has two separate hair colors, though. Interpreting the factory as some sort of Renaissance-era palace is an interesting touch, too. And possibly also MC Escher… I’m getting very confused by how those pipes connect to the factory. Here’s a strange French edition that appears to be channeling Magritte. And just look at those delightful hand-drawn letterforms! Note that his factory is not rendered as a large colorless block. Here’s an alternate Schindelman cover, and I like this one a lot better. The big candy bar title is a nice touch, but I’m puzzled by what the image of a tiny Wonka sitting on Charlie’s arm is meant to convey. He died only last year, at the age of 95.īut as for the cover, it’s all right but I don’t love it. His tight, nervous crosshatching is an increasingly rare skill, and I’m particularly impressed by the fact that he renders form with value alone, never with outlines. Charlie is pretty much the only thing he’s known for, and that’s a shame. I absolutely love Schindelman’s illustrations and I wish his career had been more prominent. This is the original cover, and coincidentally also the cover I grew up with. Now if only Brunetti would illustrate Sylvia Plath! The bright colors seem well-suited to a book about candy, too. The fates of all four of the Bad Children are on the front cover, and the back cover includes a large variety of Oompa-Loompa busywork, including, apparently, data entry. Crumb would still draw them, of course, but he’d pause.)īut all that aside, this is pretty great! For a book that has a number of vastly different scenes, Brunetti’s is the only cover I’ve found that depicts more than one of them. (Seriously, he’s drawn some cartoons that would give pause to R. Still, it’s a bit strange for me to see this artist, Ivan Brunetti, illustrating a children’s book, as he came to prominence drawing some of the most obscene, violent doodles the form has ever seen. Nowadays it’s become common for prominent cartoonists to be called upon as illustrators, a trend which I naturally approve of. Seuss, and Sylvia Plath*, and afforded him an actual knighthood, but I guess I’ll never be a fan. Seuss is a 10).īlake’s illustrious career has afforded him with opportunities to draw for the likes of William Steig, Dr.
#CHOCOLATE FACTORY ALBUM COVER IMAGERY WINDOWS#
Aside from the chimneys, Blake’s factory design is just a big gray block with windows on it, and even the chimneys would barely register a 2 on the Whimsy Scale (where Dr. Charlie has had a few different Blake covers at this point, but I selected this one because I think it highlights the main weakness of Blake’s approach: his designs tend to be kind of bland. As an adult I have a bit more respect than I used to, knowing as I do now that this kind of effortless look is actually fairly difficult to pull off, but I still don’t think these are that great. As a kid I didn’t have much respect for Blake’s drawings, as I thought they looked like they’d been dashed off in an hour.
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And, not to put too fine a point on it, I don’t like them. Exactly how Blake became so closely tied to Dahl I’m not sure, but he has at this point produced illustrations for most (if not all) Dahl’s children’s books, and these editions are by far the most common. No discussion of Roald Dahl is complete without touching on his frequent co-conspirator, Mr. Like any book that’s been in print for decades, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory has seen a large number of cover designs come and go. A Cavalcade of Covers Charlie and the Chocolate Factory