Shelf Candy Saturday

Shelf Candy Saturday is a weekend meme hosted by Five Alarm Book Reviews. It's a chance to pick a book for the week, giving the cover designer a bit of credit and praise. This is my first time doing this meme as I adore brilliant cover art.

It was difficult to choose just one and seeing as though I was chatting with my old Brazilian schoolmate earlier today, I thought I would show off one of her favourites. Just to note, this is the Brazilian cover art for the book and sadly I haven't seen it available to buy anywhere out of Brazil except the publishers website.

My choice this week is Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne. Translated into Portugese as Viagem ao centro da Terra.

This absolutely amazing book cover was created by Carlo Giovani, specifically for the Brazilian edition of the book. I have seen a variety of interesting designs done for the book, but this is by far my favourite. For those not familiar with it, Journey to the Centre of the Earth is just one of those classic science fiction novels full of adventures. The cover is so perfect as it tells the story itself. With layers of paper used to represent different levels of the earth through the adventure, it explains the depth of the story without a confusing illustration or boring text with the title of the book. The colours are vibrant and the intricate details of the boats, buildings, volcano and core of the earth are outstanding.
After looking more into the designers work, I can see he is a master with paper art. I would love to see him create more book cover art.

Designer: Carlo Giovani | Website | Purchase this edition

(Left) A sample of the designers work with paper, constructed by hand. You can find more of his work at his website.

Goodreads:

The intrepid Professor Lindenbrock embarks upon the strangest expedition of the nineteenth century: a journey down an extinct Icelandic volcano to the Earth’s very core. In his quest to penetrate the planet’s primordial secrets, the geologist—together with his quaking nephew Axel and their devoted guide, Hans—discovers an astonishing subterranean menagerie of prehistoric proportions. Verne’s imaginative tale is at once the ultimate science fiction adventure and a reflection on the perfectibility of human understanding and the psychology of the questor. As David Brin notes in his Introduction, though Verne never knew the term “science fiction,” Journey to the Centre of the Earth is “inarguably one of the wellsprings from which it all began.”