People in paper houses…
Robert Pepper-Smiths’s novella follows a friendship between two teenage girls and their search for a sense of belonging in a small village in southeastern British Columbia. The narrator’s father is a papermaker who crafts pristine sheets from mulberry branches that are bleached white after being buried in the Illecillewaet snowfields for several days.
Consequentially, I knew I had to incorporate handmade paper on the cover somehow. I set out to assemble a rag paper house, but partway through discovered that it looks much more evocative when the walls are unfolded, coming apart at the seams. A template for creating your own paper house is printed on 20 lb Domtar chamois-coloured endsheets.
Client: NeWest Press
Author: Robert Pepper-Smith
Publication date: October 2011
Awards: Winner of the 2012 Book Publishers Association of Alberta Award for Book Cover/Jacket Design
