New Book Cover – “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian”

The following is the book cover of the National Book Award Winner “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian”

The novel “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” written by Sherman Alexie, uses its front cover as an introduction to the book. The front page has almost a handmade feel to it, foreshadowing to the diary like format underneath the cover. The book is about a boy living on a reservation, and his journey to find hope for the future; he goes through so much in just 1 book, from his never-ending health struggles, to his quest to make better of his family’s fully cooked stew of poverty issues. Throughout the book, Junior (the protagonist) uses simple quirky drawings to explain what is going on, and how he feels at that particular moment. Almost all the letters on the cover are imperfect, just like Junior’s drawing style: different, weird, but full of life. Most of the lettering look like they are glued on, and the author uses the black background to emphasize on the dark issues this book covers.

In the “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” book cover above, is a reimagined cover I made using Canva.com and the procreate app.  I incorporated what I believe is the most important image of the book, the one of Junior trying to find hope, but not knowing where it was. The rest of the images are all hand drawn by me. I used the flames and the sun as a way of displaying the severity of the situation. The fire symbolizes how the reservation is really just burning itself down little by little, while the sun symbolizes happiness and whole, all words Junior describe for hope. For the title I used as many different fonts as possible to indicate how each and every person on the reservation is unique and different; yet only small percentage gets to become “flourished” (adding embellishments to the letters to make a word look more fancy, decorative, and noticeable.). While the author made the background of the front page black, I decided to make it white, displaying how there is still light at the end of the tunnel, but you just have to look for it.