January Meeting: Canva Book Covers

We had another lively meeting this month discussing When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead. Most Bookshoppers seemed to have enjoyed the book, especially the twist about Marcus and the Laughing Man. While we ate pizza and talked about time travel and if we would have been brave enough to do what Marcus had done, I set up a quick version of The $20,000 Pyramid, which is the game show that Miranda's mother is a contestant on near the end of the book. The group split up in pairs and took turns being the celebrity (giving clues for their partners to guess words and categories). It was a LOT harder than it seemed. 

I was impressed to hear that most of the Bookshop members successfully avoided seeing the cover while reading the book and were surprised by it when I unwrapped one of the books to show them the original cover. A new cover was designed for the paperback edition, but it doesn't seem like that much of an improvement to me. Most of them agreed that they probably wouldn't have picked the book up judging by the hardcover cover (both covers shown below).

Hardcover edition

Paperback edition

                                 















A few people mentioned that they had envisioned a person on the cover, or a letter, or a photograph of a city scene, and this was their chance to create that awesome new cover! We used Canva to design our own book covers; check them out below.

Front cover

Back cover

Front cover

Back cover

Front cover

Back cover

I would definitely be intrigued enough to pick up books with those covers!

Our next meeting will be Monday, February 26th. We will be discussing What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions by Randall Munroe. This is an awesome book to browse through since it's organized by absurd hypothetical questions interspersed with hilarious cartoon depictions of those questions being tested out. We will be drawing cartoons depicting our own absurd questions, both by hand and using the online tool Storyboard That. See you next month!