The Book Cover of Algal Bloom

 The Book Cover of Algal Bloom

The story of Algal Bloom covers one particular summer of two girls when the lake near the summer home that they visit annually gets overtaken by algae. Throughout the story it’s reinforced to the girls how dangerous the algae is and how they shouldn’t go near it, but of course, by the end of the story the girls end up going swimming in the lake regardless and implicitly get sick. The story mainly focuses around this lake and the summer house for the setting and the two girls as the main characters instead of the parents or the third girl. Throughout the story the girls are always thinking about the lake and talking about it and it stays consistently prominent. 

I drew this cover in colored pencil because the story is recited from a kid’s perspective and it looks like something a kid would draw. It also looks like a kid drawing because I drew it and I am not very good at drawing. The cover consists of one of the summer homes with the lake right behind it. Two girls peer out of the window looking sad while there is algae overtaking the lake. I drew the algae with a darker shade of green, but it still ended up looking like grass. I hope people can tell that it’s algae, but they can probably infer from the title. Some of the parts of this drawing look scribbled quickly but it’s because the colored pencils I have were running out of lead and I have no sharpener. Something I would change about this cover is probably have it done digitally. This way I could color easily and the picture would look complete. Also I could add in the title and the author and make those letters be visible even over the cover drawing colors.

I think that this cover accurately represents all major aspects of this short story without revealing too much of the plot or any of it at all. In fact, the story title may reveal more. It represents both girls but only alludes to the part of the plot that focuses on the specific summer instead of the growing up of the two girls. Though the real plot of the story is the development of the two girls, there’s not a big part in the story where a setting is given that represents this aspect. This is why the lake and the algal bloom drawing best represents the story.