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Celebrate the Long-Lost 'To Kill A Mockingbird' Sequel with 18 Takes on the Original Cover Design

In honor of Harper Lee's recently unearthed sequel 'Go Set a Watchman,' see modern takes on the original novel's cover design.
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We’ll finally get to see Scout Finch grow up: the newly unearthed sequel to Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel To Kill a Mockingbird is set to be published in July, over 55 years after the release of the original novel. The reclusive 88-year-old Lee actually wrote the continuation to the story in the 1950s, but set aside the draft and never returned to it after the success of the first novel. Recently, Lee’s lawyer Tonja Carter discovered the manuscript in a “secure location” alongside an original draft of To Kill a Mockingbird.

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“After much thought and hesitation I shared it with a handful of people I trust and was pleased to hear that they considered it worthy of publication. I am humbled and amazed that this will now be published after all these years,” Ms. Lee said in a statement from HarperCollins. In the new novel, Go Set a Watchman, which takes place 20 years after the events of the first book, an adult Scout visits her aging father Atticus in Maycomb, Alabama where she's "forced to grapple with issues both personal and political.” Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, plans to release two million copies on July 14.

In anticipation of Lee’s second novel in over five decades, we’ve collected the most creative To Kill a Mockingbird book cover designs, both real and conceptual, that celebrate the coming-of-age spirit of the American modern classic.

The classic gets a pop art twist in Celine Foo's rendition.

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Sam Reddy completed the modern vintage cover for his second year of university.

Illustrators Marc Storrs and Rob Morphy submitted this entry into 50 Watts' Polish Book Cover Contest, which asked contestants to design the "Polish edition" of their favorite book.

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Designed by The Folio Society, this clothbound book includes 22 black and white drawings by Aafke Brouwer.

"The imagery on this book cover was created by carving linoleum blocks, a method which emphasizes the harshness of the events in the novel," explains Mickenzie Robbins on Behance. "Further, the imagery symbolically portrays the protagonist's movement toward a loss of childhood innocence as she withnesses events unseen to most 8-year-olds, as is shown through the bright yellow which is overshadowed by a harsh black."

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Melissa Moscoso created three different covers. "The concept is to have each character's negative reputation depicted on the vellum sheet and when removed, the untarnished true identity is revealed," she explains.

"I wanted to recreate the feeling I got when I read the book for the first time. I made the cover with all the wonders Boo Radley put in the tree in my mind. I used sepia colors to evoke that feeling of timelessness," says graphic designer and illustrator Ally Simmons.

Dominic Chung was inspired by Andy Warhol’s iconic Pop-Art style. "I took it upon myself to tone down the colours, to ensure that they still contrast widely just like in pop art, but not too strikingly. The mood of the book should be more sombre or serious, as it is about the maturity and growing up of a child in relation to the world and its harsh society," he writes.

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Harper Collins/Perennial Classics' 2000 edition of the novel featured a haunting portrait of a young girl taken by photographer Jack Montgomery.

New Zealand-based artist Andrea Johnston interpreted the book for childrens in her beautiful illustrated rendition.

Illustrator Sarah Coleman, a.k.a. Inkymole, was asked to illustrate a cover for the 50th anniversary edition of one of her favorite books. "For me the most poignant moments are those when the feared Boo Radley leaves his little gifts for Scout and Jem hidden in the tree, especially the tiny figurines of the children," she writes in her blog. "That needed to be central to the image and in the end, it literally does form 'the spine' of the book. The other elements were Scout's tomboy clothing and the trees (forming play areas and hiding places), and, since I've been working with silhouettes a lot recently, a nod to the work of American artist Kara Walker, whose work frames themes relevant to the book such as race, history, narrative, power and shame."

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Edmund Zaloga created this elegant trio of cover designs.

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The first cover was for a clothbound hardback edition released by publishers at William Heinemann for the book's 50th birthday. The second was created by Hugh D'Andrade for Sterling Press. "Re-reading it a few years ago, I remembered how this book made me feel transported to another time and place, and how it helped me grapple with really difficult questions about morality and injustice," he says. "We had to get all those little details right, from Scout’s ponytail to the type to the Southern courthouse featured on the back cover,"

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Jimmy Thanh Chanthavong gave the book a die-cut dusk jacket that wrapped around the hardcover image-wrapped books.

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Says creator Deepesh Patel: "In order to illustrate the racial discrimination within this book, alongside the change from the innocence of childhood into experience, I used bird imagery to show a divide between the majority of 'white' birds and the minority of 'black' birds, which are seen through the outline of a (white) child. I cut these shapes into a sheet of paper, which I then stuck on a window to photograph the light coming through."

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El Paso, Texas Visualization major Sarah Eckles designed this playful cover.

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Artist, graphic designer, and illustrator Abby Pratchios designed her own version of the 50th anniversary edition of To Kill a Mockingbird: "A minimalist color scheme of back and white was chosen to highlight this classic novel. In view of the fact that there is an emphasis in To Kill a Mockingbird on the power of the words we speak, a typographic illustration style was chosen as the best solution for illustrating the meaningful themes of the story. A sleeve was created to not only protect the pristine white cover, but also to provide distinction for this enduring story after 50 years of continued recognition."

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