Calling all Bethany School pupils! A book cover design competition for the highly anticipated sequel to the global sensation BIRD BOX.

This competition is open to all current Bethany School pupils You may use any media to create your design e.g. paints/pencils or created electronically. All entries sent to Mr Beckham by Monday 21st February 2022.

The winner will be chosen by James Macey who is a designer/director at Blacksheep Design Ltd. He has set the brief to be very similar to what he receives from publishers. Winners will be announced on Friday 25th February 2022 and will receive Amazon vouchers as prizes!

Read on for more details…

Required size hierarchy of text on the cover art: Title – Author – Subtitle – Shout Line

*IMPORTANT* For the DESIGNER Be creative! Use any media / design style – illustration, photographic, Typography-led. Anything goes. Wow us with your creativity, whilst keeping the design for MALORIE relevant to the storyline. Good luck.

Sales Keynote:

• BIRD BOX IS BACK: We hope you packed your blindfolds…
• BIRD BOX was one of Netflix’s most successful films ever with well over 75 million streams worldwide. The film (starring Sandra Bullock and John Malkovich) sent the book back into bestseller lists in the US – making it a NYT, USA Today, Apple and Amazon bestseller years after first publication
• MALORIE is the sequel people have been waiting for…!

Description:
In the thrilling sequel to Bird Box, the inspiration for the record-breaking Netflix film that starred Sandra Bullock and “absolutely riveted” Stephen King, New York Times bestselling author Josh Malerman brings unseen horrors to life. The film adaptation of Malerman’s first novel, Bird Box, was watched by over forty-five million Netflix accounts in the first week, the best first seven days ever for a film on the platform. Countless more came to know the story through social media. The image of Sandra Bullock’s character, Malorie, blindfolded—as she’s led through a terrifying near-future apocalypse by the trained ears of her children—has become synonymous with a new generation of horror.

Now from the mind of a true master of suspense comes the next chapter in the riveting tale. This time, Malorie is front and center, and she will confront the dangers of her world head-on.

Synopsis

Birdbox: When a mysterious force decimates the population, only one thing is certain — if you see it, you die. The survivors must now avoid coming face to face with an entity that takes the form of their worst fears. Searching for hope and a new beginning, a woman and her children embark on a dangerous journey through the woods and down a river to find the one place that may offer sanctuary. To make it, they’ll have to cover their eyes from the evil that chases them — and complete the trip blindfolded.

Malorie: Now from the mind of a true master of suspense comes the next chapter in Bird Box. This time, Malorie is front and center, and she will confront the dangers of her world head-on.

Twelve years after Malorie and her children rowed up the river to safety, a blindfold is still the only thing that stands between sanity and madness. One glimpse of the creatures that stalk the world will drive a person to unspeakable violence. There remains no explanation. No solution.

All Malorie can do is survive.

But then comes what feels like impossible news. And with it, the first time Malorie has allowed herself to hope. Someone very dear to her, someone she believed dead, may be alive.

Malorie has a harrowing choice to make: to live by the rules of survival that have served her so well, or to venture into the darkness and reach for hope once more.

Comepetition Market / Authors:

Stephen King, Joe Hill, Neil Gaiman

From the author:
Hey guys…

Some visual cues/info about Malorie: There’s a town square where each building is connected by rope. Malorie, Tom (Boy), and Olympia (Girl), live in the playhouse … They see photos of the real world in the art museum that is beside the playhouse.

All the buildings have been repurposed so that people live in them. Imagine a prison where the cells are apartments.

Things called “Safer Rooms” play a part. These are essentially bunkers people have dug out in the event the creatures actually begin attacking people (they’ve never actually gone after someone in the books). At one point in the story Malorie, desperate to reach Tom, falls into one of these Safer Rooms and has a mindbending meltdown as she believes there’s a creature stuck down there with her.

Suggested imagery / feel / atmosphere:
Female lead character / Dark forest / birds / blindfolds / town square / playhouse / fear / scared / silence / caring / darkness / helplessness / desperation

Good luck!