You didn’t think that we could not talk more about the covers, did you? As we mentioned, there have been quite a few editions of the Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry cover; from the most iconic (in our opinion) image of Cassie holding back her two youngest brothers on their front porch, to much more subtle and abstract covers, to the most recent 40th anniversary version illustrated by Kadir Nelson, this book has gone through a number of artistic revisions and updates. We owe a special thank you to booklistreader for helping us recognize just how many covers there are. Head over to their blog to see even more covers and hear a middle school librarian’s perspective on them.
This is the original cover created by Jerry Pinkney. Though it’s an iconic illustrator and lovely cover, the whole thing feels a bit dated. Cassie looks a little older than how we pictured her, and the cover doesn’t convey much about the story to us.
This next version is the one we most associate with the book. We feel this cover does the best job connecting to the plot, conveying just how young Cassie and her siblings really are, and engaging readers. The art style does have a very specifically late 80s early 90s juvenile chapter book look about it that feels very comforting to us millennials, but probably would appeal less to modern readers who don’t have the same nostalgia factor. Still, we love this cover and would fully support a modernization effort that just brings this exact image more into the 21st century!
This is the most common cover that our library seems to have currently, created for the Puffin Modern Classics version of the book. If you look closely, you can see the face hidden in the cover that ¾ of us did not see until it was pointed out to us, even while reading the book. Though we could see what they were going for, this is definitely not our favorite cover, and we don’t think it would do a particularly good job enticing new, particularly young, readers.
This is the Kadir Nelson version. We love the beautifully illustrated and age-accurate image of Cassie, but weren’t sure about the cloud of smoke behind her which almost looks more like a volcano than a field on fire. Still, we really liked this cover overall.
