Welcome to The Friday Face-Off, a new weekly meme hosted by Books by Proxy. Join us every Friday as we pit cover against cover, and publisher against publisher, to find the best artwork in our literary universe.
The Friday Face-Off: All That Is Gold Does Not Glitter
Dread Mountain (Deltora Quest #5) by Emily Rodda
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Scholastic – US Cover
Cover art by Marc McBride
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Scholastic Australia – AUS Cover
Cover art by Marc McBride
The Friday Face-Off Winner is…
Scholastic – US Cover; Cover Art by Marc McBride
Best I can tell, Marc McBride is the artist for both of these covers. My resources (Internet Speculative Fiction Database) was extremely lacking for this title, and doesn’t have any of the other covers that are on Goodreads! Some of the other covers are pretty good: check them out. Because isfdb.org didn’t have much info, and I didn’t see any UK publisher that I knew by name in Goodreads, I decided to go with the AUS cover for this battle!
The AUS cover… is horrible though. Solid black? With bronze inner border? And that black outer border too? Amateur photo shop.
The US covers are perfect to capture a child’s imagination for what a fantasy story would like, and that was what made me pick them up when I was a kid. Here is the edition of book one I have: (the contrast is MUCH better in real life, promise)
Which cover do you think is the best?
-DJ
MyLifeMyBooksMyEscape 
I think you win the gold cup this week! These are awesome. I actually really like the black one because I just love the colours but the gold one really fits the bill so I’m going to have to go with a tie.
Lynn 😀
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Looking at the comments now, it seems like quite a few people prefer the black one. I don’t know: maybe its the black, or maybe I’m just attracted to all the GOLD 😛
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LOL, I took one look at this and couldn’t stop thinking about the hypnotoad from Futurama! XD
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I didn’t even think of that but you are so right! XD
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I like the black one because the contrast is starker.
x The Captain
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That is a good point. Maybe I’d like it better if I saw it in person?
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I have to be honest: I really hate both. 🙂 But you definitely picked the better of the two in my eyes.
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Haha! Yes, these are not the highest of quality, but they do look better (color and contrast and fullness) in person – at least with the copies I own.
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