A Book Cover for Olivia
My grandmother, Cindy Breeze, is writing a young adult novel and I have been one of her readers. For this blog post I designed a book cover for her book. The book has no title yet, so I called it Olivia, after the main character in the book. This book follows Olivia, also known as Livvie through her interesting adventure to Chicago. Having lost her parents when she was young, Livvie had been living with her beloved grandmother until she passed away when Livvie was 14. This left her with only one living relative, her Aunt Leigh, an opera singer in New York who had no interest in having anything to do with her niece. With the threat of foster care upon her, Livvie decides to run away, and ends up in Chicago, all alone. The background of my book cover features a city street with tall buildings rising from all directions. I chose this because the city streets of Chicago are where most of Livvie’s story takes place. It is also meant to represent the foreignness of her new surroundings, with none of the buildings being identifiable. Livvie has lived in the small town of Dear Trails for all of her life, so the busy city life in a place she has never been is all very unfamiliar and overwhelming for her.
The way that the street is nearly empty, the sky is dark, and the buildings tower around her creates a sense of smallness in a big world. In the new environment of the city of Chicago, Livvie finds herself feeling very alone, as she knows no one and doesn’t know where to sleep, eat or how she can make money. Livvie is used to living in comfort, surrounded by the company of her grandma and friends, and having her warm house to sleep in, so she feels very alone as a result of her decision to run away. The cover is meant to look like she is alone in a big new city, staring up at a new world, and at a loss for what to do with herself.
The last important detail of the cover is the red suitcase. This is the only thing that Livvie brings with her from Deer Trails to Chicago is her red suitcase from home, full of her belongings. While this may seem insignificant, it is very important to her, as it is one of the only things she has left from her mom. The suitcase is also the only thing that was there with her for her whole journey. In a dialogue with a new acquaintance, we can see how much she values her suitcase. When Livvie seems apprehensive of the motel she is brought to, her new friend says, “‘It’s as safe as it comes. What you worried about – someone going to steal your funky red suitcase?’” to which she retorts, “‘Don’t make fun of this suitcase. It was my mother’s,’” (Breeze 42). Due to her attachment to the suitcase, I thought it was an important detail to include in the book cover for Olivia.
