The year is 1936, and the protagonist, Abilene Tucker, is in most ways a typical eleven year-old girl in Moon Over Manifest, the middle-grade debut novel by Clare Vanderpool. What is unusual is that Abilene’s single-parent father is a hobo, and as the story begins, she has spent the last several years of her childhood happily riding the rails with him.
For the cover, art director Vikki Sheatsley asked for a shot of Abilene walking down the Kansas railroad tracks. The hardest part was finding the right model (thank you, Kate!) and setting. The most labor-intensive task was aging the overalls. The rest pretty much took care of itself.
CLIENT: RANDOM HOUSE
ART DIRECTOR: VIKKI SHEATSLEY
