Tuesday 24 August 2010

A Prequel to Harry Potter???

Long before J.K. Rowling worked her magic on a boy wizard at a boarding school for neophyte spell casters, the artist Steve Lavis was commissioned to do a series of book covers for a speccy wizard kid centered around a couple of books by noted American fantasy author John Bellairs.  Bellairs career had taken off in a new direction, when in 1973 following on from the success of his Tolkien'esque "The Face in the Frost"  the second publisher that he approached with a script for an adult fantasy novel suggested he rewrote it for a younger audience.  The book titled "The House With a Clock in it's Walls" had been followed by another fourteen young adult fantasy novels of which these are two.


They still look amazing some twenty years on:

3 comments:

  1. What is it about boy wizards and bins? There's that lad there, and Master Potter of course, and Timothy Hunter in the Books of Magic - I seem to remember he was four-eyed too. It's all that late-night reading by torchlight under the bed clothes, no doubt.

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  2. Timothy Hunter?

    Sounds like someone else I need to mug up on Dave - many thanks for the pointer!

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  3. Hi Guys, great to see my old buddy Steve's work.
    Mike Brownlow put me onto your blog great stuff!

    http://popups.posterous.com/
    http://paulstickland.tumblr.com/

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