Cole Magnus Cover Art Easter Eggs

The cover art for Cole Magnus was a headache to create. Grace wanted a cover that not only caught the reader’s eye but told a story. After months of planning and scrapping ideas, the cover for Cole was born.

Take a look at the cover; how many characters do you see? Two on the front cover and one on the back, right? Wrong! There is actually a third figure on the front cover. Hold out your copy of Cole and look at it from a distance. See it yet? All the other settings and characters make up Cole’s silhouette. All three main characters are present on the front cover. Lyla, between Grace’s name along the bottom and Saxe, at eye height with Cole’s silhouette.

On the back of the book, you can see Cole again in the bottom right corner of the book, staff in hand. Only this time, Cole has a staff in his hand. On the front cover, Lyla has the staff. It isn’t until chapter 20 of Cole Magnus that Cole takes the walking stick. This back cover is a hint at the ending!

For those particularly vigilant viewers, you might also notice that the trees that make up the border and spine of the book are birch trees. What do birch trees symbolize? Rebirth! What happens to Cole at the end of Chapter 20? He gets a second chance at life after he thought it was over.

The dark, scraggly trees that help make up Cole’s silhouette on the front cover are mostly dead, which drastically contrasts the mostly sunny, springtime feel most of the book has. This is because Saxe has trapped River Haven in a bubble of eternal spring. As his spells come crumbling down near the end of the book, the weather begins to change. A cold wind, a patter of rain. In chapter one, Cole and Lyla arrive in Carlin, it is snowing. When Cole returns to Carlin in the Epilogue, he reminisces about when he first traveled there in the winter. Time has passed, and spring is returning to Carlin just as winter creeps into River Haven. Cole describes the scene in Carlin as if no time has passed from when he and Lyla were there months ago. He says, “The fog settled in corners and on rooves like snow” (Cole, p. 357). The dark and deadened trees in Cole’s silhouette are referring to this too. Although the trees behind his silhouette are in full bloom, to Cole, no time has passed in Carlin. He is trapped in the same loop of bad weather.

In the same silhouette, there is a full moon shining down on Saxe and Lyla. The only moon phase directly mentioned is the full blood moon in chapters 19 and 20.

In the original description on the back cover, this sentence was in the second paragraph: ‘Pieces fall into place faster than a chess game’ which avid readers might recognize from Glenn Gentrey’s description. Grace thought the chess metaphor would fit better with Glenn’s story, so only a week from publication, she removed that sentence. However, the last sentence of the description and the teaser sentences at the very top of the cover still leaves an easter egg for the deleted metaphor.

From the color scheme to the type of trees building the border, Grace has thought out every aspect of this beautiful cover.