THE FIERCE LITTLE WOMAN AND THE WICKED PIRATE, Joy Cowley and Jo Davies / Joy Cowley and Sarah Davis

This post is a bit of compare-and-contrast between the 1984 and 2010 versions of Joy Cowley’s The Fierce Little Woman and the Wicked Pirate. This story was originally published by Shortland Publications Limited with illustrations by Jo Davies, and in 2010 was republished by Gecko Press in a new format, with new illustrations by Sarah Davis. Overall, Gecko Press’ edition has far higher production quality and a superior design, creating a far more appealing book.

First of all, the two versions have very different formats. The Shortland book was a small portrait softcover with a stapled binding. The Gecko version comes in softcover and hardcover editions whose dimensions are easily twice those of the Shortland book, and just slightly landscape. With more space to play with, Sarah Davis’ illustrations and the Gecko design achieve more than the Shortland book was able to.

The front cover of the Shortland book

The Shortland edition’s cover image is a reproduction of one of the interior illustrations, surmounted by a scroll with the book’s title. The title is set in a bold serif font that is also used, at a smaller size, for the author and illustrator names below the main image. The font is simple and uninspiring; the placement of the author and illustrator names inset into the illustration with an ill-fitting fade box is poorly done. I’m not sure whether it is due to the age of the book, but the cover has a greenish cast to it that, while sea-like, is a bit queasy.

The front cover of the Gecko Press book

Now, the Gecko version. The font used for the title and names is heavy but whimsical, and well placed in the space provided for it by the cover image’s design. Thanks to this placement, the viewer’s eye is drawn first to the title, then down to the two characters’ faces. This cover illustration is unique to the cover, not pulled from inside the book. The two characters’ poses and expressions reflect their characterisation, and initial antagonism, in the story. The colours – particularly the shades of aqua blue – are clear and bright, giving the cover a light-hearted feel.

Next, let us compare a spread from each book. The two spreads contain almost the same text (they begin with the same line, but the Gecko version moves the final sentence on to the next page), but their treatment of the text, use of illustration and layout of image and text differ.

The Shortland book treats the two pages individually. The roughly circular illustrations with fade-out borders are positioned in the same place on each page; each page has four lines of text, aligned in the bottom quarter of the page beneath the illustrations. The font used is a plain serif, similar though not identical to that used on the cover. The leading is narrow, which combined with the large lettering and solid black font, makes the text seem heavy and squashed.

The images illustrate the text directly. There is some difference in perspective – one is a distant shot, the other medium – but nothing to make them stand out particularly. In the second image, the fierce little woman’s expression is slightly melancholy. The colours used are clear and watercolour-bright, but the colour scheme does not reflect the feeling of the text in any way, just the concrete matter.

The Gecko version is very different contrast. First, the whole spread is used in the design, to great effect. Davis uses colour and perspective to reinforce the loneliness of the fierce little woman’s lifestyle expressed in the text: the jetty stretches out, empty, far into the distance to where the woman’s house is. The sailors’ ship is in the distance, too, but moving further away. The colours in the scene are shadowy, moody blues and greens, not the bright, clear colours of the cover. But this version of the fierce little woman doesn’t look melancholic at her loneliness – instead she sits knitting, kicking her bare feet and scowling out to sea. Perhaps she is unhappy, but if so, she refuses to mope about it. The illustration takes the mood of the text and makes it cover the whole page, imbuing the spread with atmosphere and emotion. This marriage of text, design, and illustration is what makes great picture books stand out over the rest.

The text is set against the sky, where it does not interfere with the illustration – on the contrary, and in contrast to the interaction of text and image in the Shortland book, the illustration appears to have been deliberately designed with the text in mind, as the sky is filled with bright white cloud that provides a clean backdrop to the text. The fine serif is easy to read and nicely leaded. The last line is emphasised by being put in its own paragraph, rather than being squashed up with the rest of the text. ­­

Overall, the Gecko update of The Fierce Little Woman and the Wicked Pirate far surpasses the original, even containing the same text as and similar illustrations to Shortland Publications’ book. The use of full spreads rather than only single pages, better typesetting and use of fonts, energetic and atmospheric illustrations, and general attention to layout and design make for a far better designed book.

Samples collected: 29 June 2012