Monday, May 2, 2011

Cover Review: Larry Rostant

Cover Crazy is a weekly meme hosted by Tawni at The Book Worms where a beautiful cover is featured each week for all of us to admire. I am going to use my Cover Crazy posts as an opportunity to review a book cover I love or review any cover (even the ones I don't love) from a book I've read. This week's Cover Crazy is for:  

Artist Spotlight: Larry Rostant

You may not know the name Larry Rostant, but I guarantee you're familiar with his work. The man knows how to do "Girl with Pretty Dress" like no one else! When I judge books by their covers, his are almost always among those that make me immediately respond with "Gimmegimmegimmegimmegimme!!!" What I wouldn't do for an opportunity to play dress up with his costume closet. He's done so many covers and his style varies widely, but these are among my favorites:

 




Have I crashed your browsers yet? If you're still here, which cover is your favorite? Do you have a favorite Larry Rostant cover I didn't include? Do these covers make you want to read the books?


Interested in covers? 
Be sure to check out another Cover Crazy post by Gina from My Precious.
 




Want to check out another Artist Spotlight post?
More of my Cover Crazy posts

23 comments:

  1. I had no idea all these covers were done by the same artist! Very cool. Hard to pick a favourite, but you are so right that he does the "pretty dress" cover so well. I really like the Belle and Amaranth Enchantment covers.

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  2. Oh, so many covers I have loved are by her! I didn't know. My favorites are:
    Fire and Graceling
    Princess Ben
    Passion
    and not body's prize

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  3. I just love the Kristin Cashore book covers and The Demon King. I actaully picked up the Demon King because of the cover. Larry can really make you envy a book covers dress. They are just gor-ge-ous!

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  4. WOW he has done a lot of beautiful covers. My personal favourites are Graceling and Fire. Just absolutely gorgeous :)

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  5. Wow- I thought that there was something similar between all these covers! I can't actually choose a favourite- all those dresses are gorgeous :)

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  6. Amazing!!!

    Fire is probably my FAV!!

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  7. The Princess Bride because I adore the movie and the characters look great! One of my favorites of all time.

    ~Kelsa

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  8. AAAHH!! Small! I would have never guessed that all of these lovely covers were by the same person, but now it makes sense! You have enlightened me. :D

    Favorite: "Fire" and "Graceling". WOW those covers are powerful!
    Second favorite: "The Princess Bride". Because not only is the art beautiful, but the movie and book are both some of my favorites.

    Ok this is so super duper cool and you should definitely do it again. ;)

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  9. Liking the covers. ;) Okay not all of them, but most of them. I like the cover of Nobody's Prize, The Princess and the .. covers. ;)

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  10. Wow! I'm not usually a fan of covers with large images, but these covers are really well done. I haven't heard of Larry Rostant before, but of the covers you listed, I like 'A Kiss in Time by Alex Flinn'. The green of the dress is lovely, and the direction of her face matched with the text position makes for a nice cover. Thanks for sharing :).

    Alisa @ the Novel Nook

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  11. I love that you did an artist spotlight! I know almost all of those covers (even international ones) and didn't realize they were all by the same person. I love that he does so much period art--It's obviously what he's good at, too. GORGEOUS!!

    This reminds me of your comment about EVER on my blog. I agree: I like Larry's cover best, but the new one works better for a MG title. I can't tell you how many times I've tried to sell the book to a girl who likes mythology and her (or her mom) decide "no, inappropriate" based on the cover.

    Oh, but his books are gorgeous! And if I bought more than one book due to the cover, I've always been tempted to do so with Kristin Cashore...

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  12. I've always loved the Cinda Williams covers, but that Winter's Child cover is pretty spectacular. :-)

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  13. You're a fan of historical books right? So you must love these even more! The princess gowns are fantastic. I gotta say I'm loving the Graceling and Fire covers, I'd be much more likely to pick them up if I saw them!

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  14. Danya, He’s done so many covers it’s astounding! I like those two covers a lot too.

    Alex, I love the Fire cover. She look so strong. I love all the ones you mentioned too. They’re all books I want to read because of their beautiful covers.

    Vy, Totally gorgeous! I love the Demon King cover. It really looks magical.

    Nic, Those two really are hits! I love the way her red dress is billowing out behind her in Fire.

    Stephanie, Once you get a feel for his work I bet you’ll be able to spot it on new covers. I thought you’d like the dresses :)

    Bookish Brunette, I love that one too!

    Kelsa, I don’t think those are the actors even, but they look so similar! I love how much the cover matches the movie. I’m with you about the movie too, it’s one of my favorites!

    Sierra, :D I have at least two more artist spotlights scheduled, so there will definitely be more :) I’m glad you enjoyed it!

    Nina, I like Nobody’s Prize too. Even though we don’t see her face her whole posture looks defiant and strong. I like that a lot, especially with the title.

    Alisa, I agree about A Kiss in Time. I was so disappointed when I saw the redesigned version with the cover to match Beastly. I like this one with the green dress so much better.

    A Backwards Story, He is so good at this kind of period art! You bring up a really good point about covers though. Even if they’re beautiful, they really need to fit the story properly. I love the beautiful dress thing that’s been popular lately, but too often they have nothing to do with the story. Or, like in the case of Ever, they even misrepresent the book. Some of these are perfect for the book (like Princess of the Midnight Ball, I think)

    Shannon, Cinda Willams has some really beautiful covers. I only found out that Larry did them as well when I was putting together this post. I knew the “pretty dresses” covers were his, but I was surprised by the Seven Realms books. I think there was an even prettier version of the Winter’s Child cover that he had done from the same photo shoot.

    Laura, I am and I do! :)

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  15. I agree. What's funny is that recently, I was thinking about JDG's covers b/c I REALLY wanted a picture with a similar style dress b/c I sort of want to make a blog header with a princess reading a book. I pulled out my copy of MIDNIGHT BALL to sketch what I wanted (Badly, of course). That might have been the day you were drooling over my Prisma Colors, lol!

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  16. How do you make it so that you automatically send an email out whenever you reply to a comment?

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  17. Wow...what beautiful covers! It's hard to choose. I'd say that I like the Cashmore covers best, especially Fire. I love the way the clouds look and the red dress.

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  18. The Demon King would be my favorite cover. I'm not a huge fan of pretty dress covers. I do appreciate you pointing out that one person designs many of these covers. I find those kind of facts very interesting.

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  19. A Backwards Story, Ooh that sounds like a pretty idea! I can’t wait to see what you come up with :) I do love Prisma Colors (so expensive, but worth every penny). I don’t have anything that automatically sends out emails. I just do it manually. It takes a good bit of time, but it seems like people like it (I hope!) :)

    Julie, I agree, that red dress on Fire is fantastic.

    Gina, Glad you like it! I have a few cover artist posts scheduled. I like it when I get so familiar with their work that I can recognize it right away when I see a new book come in. I love the colors on The Demon King.

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  20. Are those Kristin Cashore covers from other countries? I've never seen those versions before, but they're really pretty. My favorite, though, is Princess of Glass. Pink fluffy yay!

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  21. Logan, Yes, apparently those are the covers for the UK, Australia, and New Zealand adult editions, but the YA editions for those countries use the same photos (but changed a little). The French adult editions also use the same pictures, and the Dutch YA version of Graceling is the same.

    Can you go wrong with pink fluffy fun? I think not! (Except, I think it would have been really enhanced with a few sparkles…just saying)

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  22. Have you seen BitterBlue's cover? Its just as gorgeous as Graceling and Fire ^_^. I didn't know he did the cover for The Demon King! I love that cover.

    His portfolio is drool worthy.

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  23. Sandy, I did see it! Or, at least I saw the US cover. It is really pretty. I would love to play dress up with his costumes!

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