Harry Potter and the Jacket Unveiling

by Shannon Maughan, PW Daily for Booksellers -- Publishers Weekly, 3/8/2005

Can you judge a book by its cover? Well, Harry Potter fans eager for book six can try, now that the jacket for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, due out July 16, has been unveiled.

This morning on the Today Show, the book's editor, Arthur A. Levine, showed off Mary GrandPré's latest Harry Potter artwork. The jacket is predominantly a spooky, glowing green this time, with swirly purple shadows and display type. The central figures are Dumbledore and Harry shown peering into what appears to be Dumbledore's pensieve (a magical basin for storing one's excess thoughts, first introduced in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire). Scholastic representatives will not confirm or deny anything about elements of the art, but this reporter (and admitted fan) is sticking with her hunch.

During the show, Levine didn't reveal anything new about the book's content. On the other hand, Scholastic revealed more about its $60, 704-page deluxe edition, which will also be released on July 16. The 32-page art insert will be on special paper at the end of the book "featuring near scale reproductions of Mary GrandPré's interior art, as well as a never-before-seen piece of full-color-art for the frontispiece."

The book will also have a foil-stamped cardboard slipcase printed with the Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince cover image and will come with "full-color endpapers printed with the jacket art from the regular edition, luxurious foil, and a wraparound jacket featuring exclusive, suitable-for-framing art from Mary GrandPré," according to the publisher's description.