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Design Category
Book design, 2002
Design firm
Alfred A. Knopf Publishers (New York, New York)
Collection
(2003) 50 Books/50 Covers of 2002
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The two biggest challenges with this were: 1) the pressure of tremendous critical and commercial expectations because it was the long-awaited follow-up novel to The Secret History; and, 2) the title, which sounds like the long-awaited follow-up to The Pokey Little Puppy. Many thanks to Gloria Vanderbilt for lending me the antique, worried-looking baby mannequin head, which I spied in her atelier one afternoon and wept with relief. Photographer Geoff Spear worked his usual magic on it and voilà! This was one of those rare dream jobs that required no revisions, from its initial presentation to a terrifying gauntlet of editorial and marketing tribes.