March of the Penguins

Hello — I am back from Key West, Florida, with a keen suntan and lots of stories to tell. More about that later, but first I wanted to write about something I found in the Atlanta airport bookstore. Shortly before our return trip, I had finished the Peggy Lee bio I brought and was in the mood for something short, literate and different for the long plane ride back home. The store had a display of a new Penguin Classics series called Great Journeys, each slim paperback sporting a beautiful cover design by David Pearson. There’s a whole lot to love here: the perfectly symmetrical illustrations, the colors reminiscent of old kiddie textbooks, the touchable paper texture, the smart use of Adobe Caslon as the only font. Despite the high price, I laid down ten bucks for Henry Walter Bates’ Victorian-era In the Heart of the Amazon Forest and it was a good little diversion for the ride back home.

I oughta note that the UK edition of Great Journeys contains twenty titles, while we in the US only get ten. Peruse David Pearson’s site for more droolworthy book design.