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Final Project Assignment: Judging a Book By Its Cover

 


“A book cover demands our initial engagement with a work. You may not think a cover reflects your own thoughts of a book, but it evokes a response and inspires a reader’s imagination to begin building the world within the pages created by the author…A book cover is a key with which we open a world of storytelling…one page at a time, cover to cover.” (Elda Rotor, Classic Penguins: Cover to Cover)

PROMPT: For your final project, I want you to find new cover art for each of the books in class. The cover art should have a ‘conversation’ with the text, meaning they should evoke one or more of the following themes:

  • A reference to a theme or symbol in the work
  • An evocation of the historical moment—the art, ideas of the time
  • A reference to the biography of the author
  • An illustration of a specific passage or setting

To do this, I want you to find six works of art that can evoke one or more of the above aspects, so we can think about each book in a new context. A cover is the key to opening a book and believing in that world. Sometimes, a painting from the period is enough to help us understand where we are; at other times, we need more than that to help capture the mixture of styles and ideas we encounter within. The works you chose are entirely up to you, but of course you can draw from the works/artists we’ve discussed in class, and I’ll give you a link to many 19th and 20th century artists on the blog. But you can use ANYTHING that you feel captures the feel and spirit of a work (and if you’re an artist yourself,  you could even make your own art—but don’t feel pressured to do that!).

FLIPGRID: Instead of writing a paper, I want you to create a Flipgrid presentation that showcases your new works of art. Flipgrid is a very easy site where you can create a 10 minute video of slides with narration (I’ll show you how do to this). Our class will have a Flipgrid site which will be linked to the blog, and all you have to do is make a series of six slides, each one with the following:

  • The Work of Art, along with Artist, Title, and Date
  • The Title and Author of the Book
  • A Passage from the Work that somehow communicates with the Cover Art (you can explain this in your narration)

I’ll provide links and videos that show you how easy Flipgrid is to use, and I’ll make my own video as an example. Don’t stress out about this, but try to find interesting and new ways to showcase the works and ‘seduce’ the reader into opening the cover.

DUE NO LATER THAN THE LAST DAY OF FINAL EXAM WEEK: FRIDAY DECEMBER 10th BY 5pm

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