Let's Go On An Adventure

Have a go at designing a book cover for your own creative story!

A book cover has three parts, the front, back and the spine.

You can design all three or pick one part of the cover to design.

You will need:

• An A4 piece of card
• Pencil (HB, B, 2B)
• Pens (various colours)
• Colouring pencils/crayons

Before you start designing, you may find it helpful to think about what your story will about. You may event want to write a story to put inside your book cover!

Instructions for the front cover:

The front cover of a book is the first thing people will see, so you want it to draw people in and make them want to read your story!

• Start by picking out what you think are the most important parts of your story and should feature on the front cover.
• Plan your layout- focus on where you're going to place your picture(s) and/or text.
• Create a catchy title.
• Design an eye-catching picture(s).
• Choose your colours- do you want to use bright colours or darker mysterious colours?
• Make sure you write clearly- your text should be easy to read.

Instructions for the back cover:

• Clearly write the blurb (this is a short summary of your story). It shouldn't give away too much information, but it should make people want to read your story to find out what happens.
• You might want to put some extra pictures on the back of the book.
• You could include a quote from a book reviewer about how good your story is.

Instructions for the spine:

• The book spine should have the story title and the authors name written horizontally. This is so the book can be easily found on a bookshelf.

This activity was inspired by the book ‘The Ship that Sailed to Mars’ by William Mitcheson Timlin (1892- 1943), which is held in our Special Collections.

The book is a fantasy story about an Old Man who dreams of sailing to Mars. Helped by elves and fairies, the Old Man builds a ship and journey's to Mars, encountering lots of different creatures and going on adventures along the way.

If you want to learn more about The Ship that Sailed to Mars click on the image below.