Freestyle Academy proudly presents

Desilite: A Senior Narrative Production by Mikele Baugh (2018)

This book cover is based on my short story Desilite. In my story, a young fisherman and his father come across a whale stuck in a patch of trash and debris. The father is the one to jump down from the boat to help the creature. Desilite is a latin imperative, translated literally as “jump down.” My story was inspired by a passage of Caesar’s The Gallic War. While Caesar and his troops land off the shore of Britain, many of the men are hesitant to venture out onto the new terran. One man, the soldier in charge of carrying the legionary standard, calls out to the troops to take action and “jump down” into the water. It is this spirit of courage and action that I try to convey both through my story and my book cover.

When I wrote my story, I wanted it to resemble a fairy tale or story you might hear an adult tell to an awe-filled child. I wanted to carry over this “puppet show” feeling into the cover. I thought that some sort of figurine in a setting would convey that feeling. I started by making a set out of a collage. To do so, I used paint, tissue paper, origami paper, and scraps torn form magazines to create a backdrop. Once the scene was set, I made the figurines out of origami. I then put the scene together and photographed it. After editing it in Photoshop, I used Illustrator to create the wave detailing used on the inside flaps. The end result is better than I could have hoped for. I think that the aesthetic of storytelling is properly expressed by my cover.

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