All the hoopla over National Poetry Month reminded me about how much I love the book design on Toby Barlow's Sharp Teeth, a novel-length blank verse poem about werewolves in Los Angeles. Shortly after the book came out, senior HarperCollins designer Christine Van Bree had been kind enough to explain to me how she had taken the core elements of the illustration Natasha Michaels had done for the cover Suzanne Dean designed for Heinemann's UK edition and applied it directly to a raspberry textured paper over board, with three different pigments of foil stamping—black for the dog's body, silver for its teeth, and white for the hand-lettered type. Putting all the blurbs—and this is probably the only book that comes with public endorsements from Nick Hornby, Michael Moorcock, and David Mamet—in red and white type on a black background was the result, Van Bree added, of a suggestion from editor Jennifer Barth, and production director Roni Axelrod worked closely with the printers to make sure all their creative intentions were fully realized. The result is, quite honestly, one of the handsomest books, on the level of the physical object, likely to be published all year.

Oh, yeah, and it's a damn good story, too.