David Wiesner (So You Want to Be a Wizard)
Still a new artist on the scene when Delacorte commissioned him in 1982 to do the cover for So You Want to Be a Wizard, David Wiesner is now a two-time Caldecott Medal winner and two-time Caldecott Honor Book designate for his work on such books as Frogs, The Three Pigs, and The Day the World Broke. In the early 80’s he was still doing work for other authors’ books, and having illustrated one of Jane Yolen’s novels for Dell, he was then brought in to do the painting for the first Young Wizards hardcover
His association with the YW books does not end there. Wiesner’s beautiful work for a promotional poster for the Master Eagle Gallery in New York later inspired DD to write the Kit-and-Nita short story “Uptown Local”. An attempt was made to get a reproduction of the painting for the 20th anniversary edition of So You Want to Be a Wizard, but unfortunately the original painting had been sold, and Wiesner no longer had a slide. An excerpt from the poster image is linked to here.
While the first hardcover edition of about 1500 copies eventually completely sold out, the feeling at Delacorte at that point was that Wiesner’s color palette was “too subdued”, and that sales would be helped by a cover with livelier colors. The art director decided to choose a different artist for the next hardcover, though the Wiesner cover art continued to be used on the large-format Dell “Laurel Leaf” young adult paperbacks until at least 1986.
The Random House Children’s Books edition (ISBN: 0385293054) and the 1986 Bantam Books edition (ISBN: 0440982529) apparently also used the Wiesner cover.
