I’ve already done two posts here and here, and this is the final one.

Continuing from where we left off

We may have entered a new millenium, but the first Secret Seven covers don’t change drastically from the last 90s set. In fact, there’s something distinctly 50s-ish about them.

Yes, these are another set of cropped Hodder covers! They have swapped around Blyton’s name, the book title and the series title, plus changed the colour of the banner. They’ve also added a logo to indicate that these are full-colour editions. I appreciate that it makes sense to redesign the covers to differentiate these from the previous, non-full-colour ones, but I have to wonder how time time and money was spent given that they end up very similar.

The worst phase

While there are some dubious entries earlier, these two sets have to be the worst.

First we have a Hodder set from 2002 with artwork by Stuart Williams. These are oil paintings, you can see more of his works here. I initially thought they might be digital art but I think that’s because the facial expressions/poses remind me of digital art used on the Famous Five series. That particular style may be more ‘of its time’ rather than to do with the process of creating it.

Anyway, this series starts with a few covers where there are children doing the sort of thing you might expect on the covers of a Secret Seven book. They hold torches, they look down from a tree house, they look shocked by a box of… junk? OK, that one I can’t explain.

Then there’s a run of covers really focussed on hands. The hands pick a note, a Secret Seven badge, an envelope,  light fireworks… (There are other parts of the body on two but the hands are very much the focus.)

Then we return to children doing things like holding a toy aeroplane and a torch, before we get a dog (Scamper) and a raven (??), then back to a child, then some medals (no hands or any other body parts) and finally the Seven together for the first time on the final book.

All in all it’s weird selection of images. Most of them convey nothing about the story and do nothing to suggest it will be exciting.

This is followed by another set of Hodders in 2006. These are definitely digital art, and look like they are aimed at pre-schoolers. Like with many artists I’ve looked up – their other works generally look a million times better than the stuff they do for Blyton’s books and I can only imagine that the final product is shaped largely by the publisher’s instructions. You can see more of Stephen Hanson’s work here.

Many of them feature night-time scenes which makes it hard to tell what’s going on, and the extremely cartoonish characters make it seem very cheap and childish even for children’s books. The Secret Seven is (are?) aimed at younger readers, 7-10 say, while the Famous Five is more like 9-12, but even so, these look like cheap TV animations for toddlers.

The Tony Ross era

Now I remember Tony Ross from my childhood – he wrote and illustrated the Little Princess books and illustrated the Dr Xargle books by Jeanne Willis. (To this day my family still quote and misquote the poops I pipped on a furball and bloken all my pegs page from Dr Xargle’s Book of Earth Tiggers. He is also well-known for illustrating the Horrid Henry books by Francesca Simon.

I associate him with the distinctive style of the Little Princess and Dr Zargle books – lots of short, fat children with round faces and pink cheeks, watercolours with lots of multi-hued shading – though his style is adapted to suit different works.

I look at the Secret Seven books, though, and think of Quentin Blake. I also think of Mark Beecher who also reminds me of Quentin Blake. I think it’s the sketchy nature of them.

Anyway, this first set of Tony Ross covers are from Hodder in 2013. They remind me a bit of the 60s Armada’s with their solid colour background. I don’t dislike these, actually, though I’m not sure they’re quite right for the Secret Seven – or Blyton.

After this I’m rather making it up as I go along as the Cave lacks publishing info. There are definitely three further sets – you can tell as one book is in all four, so it’s not a case of a set using two or more different styles.

The second set of Tony Ross covers obviously come some time after 2013, and are probably by Hodder again. They are just a re-use of the previous Tony Ross covers but on a white background. Five books were done in this style – 1-3 and 5-6. Oddly the tree is flipped on Secret Seven Adventure – none of the rest are changed.

The third set are from some time after, after 2013. These again use the same artwork as the previous two, but with a different background colour. Again, not all books got this design, in fact only three did, 5 and 10-11.

The fourth set – after, after, after 2013, also same artwork, also different colour, also not all books. The difference here is that the background is a solid colour overlayed by a faint enlargement of the main artwork, almost like a shadow or projection (except book #4 as it has a black background. The text layout has changed which is how you can tell it’s part of this set and not the third). Ten books were done here, 1, 4-5, 9, 12 and 14-15.

I made a handy table below mostly for myself to be able to figure out what was going on, but why not share it here too? It doesn’t explain the logic though – probably to do with which books were more popular and sold out (but are redesigns really necessary, couldn’t more of an existing style been produced?)

What the chart shows more easily is that only one book (#5) got all four styles, while one (#7) didn’t get any redesigns. Most books (9) got two designs, a couple 1 and 3, but mostly 1 and 4, and it was only the early books (1, 2-6) which had more than two designs.

 A return to the classics

And finally, the final set. Again, I unfortunately have no publishing info. But these come after 2013 and three more sets were published so I’d guess we were in the 2020s by now.

Not all books appear to have been redone again, which is a shame as these are another version of the original covers.

We do have books 2, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14 and 15.

The colours have been mucked about with, but they are still far better than most of the modern covers.

And that’s it – for now. What will the Secret Seven look like next – your guess is as good as mine!