Top 5 Tuesday #60: I Love Buildings on My Covers

Top 5 Tuesday is a weekly meme created by Shanah, the Bionic Book Worm, and now hosted by Meeghan at Meeghan Reads.

This week’s topic:

Top 5 books with buildings/vehicles on the cover

(What are your 5 favourite covers with either vehicles or buildings on them??)

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Well, guess who got carried away with this topic? I love illustrations of buildings, and a couple of the books I’ve bought and read over the years are due to this reason. So I went beyond the required 5 and listed a good bit below that I own.

Worlds of Wonder by Johanna Basford (illus.)

The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson

Hello Lighthouse by Sophie Blackall (illus.)

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, 15^th Anniversary ed. By J.K. Rowling, illus. by Kazu Kibuishi

House of Secrets by Chris Columbus & Ned Vizzini, illus. by Greg Call

Basford’s Worlds of Wonder is an adult coloring book that I bought earlier this year since it’s filled with illustrations of houses for me color in. The Final Empire is the first novel in Sanderson’s Mistborn fantasy series, for which I bought the U.K. covers because I love the illustration style, and Hello Lighthouse is a children’s picture book about a lighthouse keeper. The illustrations are beautiful, and the book does a great job briefly informing readers about what a lighthouse keeper does and how such a person lives. The tall lighthouse on the cover is why I bought it.

I love Kibuishi’s covers of the Harry Potter books. I love that he illustrates the Burrow on the cover of the second novel. One of my favorite things about this edition of the Harry Potter books is that when placed together, the spine forms an illustration of Hogwarts! And I just love the design of the house on the cover of House of Secrets. It looks Victorian.

The Mysterious Mansion: A Mind-Bending Activity Book Stranger Than a Fairytale by Daria Song (illus.)

Spot, the Cat by Henry Cole (illus.)

Spot & Dot by Henry Cole (illus.)

Seraphina by Rachel Hartman

Winterhouse by Ben Guterson, illus. by Chloe Bristol

Sky High by Germano Zullo, illus. by Albertine

I LOVE the details in the illustration on the cover of the Mysterious Mansion and same too for the original cover of Seraphina by Rachel Hartman, a YA fantasy novel set in a world where dragons can take on human shape. I hate that they changed the cover of those books to blue and purple, which prevents the details in the illustrations from standing out. Henry Cole’s Spot, the Cat and it’s follow up, Spot & Dot, are children’s picture books set in a city that strongly resembles Washington, D.C., to me. There are loads of illustrations of row houses in them and I LOVE it!

Sky High is a silly children’s picture book about neighbors competing to see who can build the tallest, grandest house. It was originally published in France, I believe. I enjoyed it. Winterhouse is a middle grade novel I haven’t yet read, but I bought it for that beautiful illustration on the cover and because of the cutouts that peek at the cover beneath.

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HAVE YOU READ ANY OF THESE?

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