I wonder whether most people regard Philip Pullman as an author and illustrator, picking up on the fact that he made the striking black and white images throughout the His Dark Materials trilogy.
If you visit Philip’s newly expanded website, you will be in no doubt of his illustrative talents. He has created a gallery page showing his illustrations from all three volumes and the book jackets used in many foreign editions, from the Faro islands to Indonesia to Galicia.
I found this section interesting because (in some cases more than others) it shows how other countries’ publishers choose to represent the stories. I am intrigued with the Dutch jackets for His Dark Materials, though I am not sure how much they would entice a child to pick them up. They have used three paintings by the Greek-Italian Surrealist painter Giorgio de Chirico.
I identified two of the jackets as The Mystery and Melancholy of a Street and Torino Printaniere. I guess the publisher decided to show us the arrid, haunted Italianate cityscape of the books’ parallel universe, Cittagazze, rather than main character Lyra and the huge polar bear, Iorek, who seem to be on many of the other jackets.
The most frightening jacket has to be the Slovakian cover of The Subtle Knife – if that deranged pair of eyes doesn’t keep you awake at night, I don’t know what will!