A Turtle Plays the Violin in a Flipbook Introducing Riverhead’s Upcoming Titles

Riverhead Books has a reputation for publishing fascinating nonfiction and literary fiction titles. Books like Patricia Lockwood’s Priestdaddy and Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West are already rocking spots on Paste’s list of 2017’s best reads so far, and it looks like 2018 is shaping up to be a knockout year for the publisher as well.

For their Spring 2018 catalogue, Riverhead opted for an unconventional format: a flipbook. We’re excited to share a first look of the book, featuring artwork by London-based illustrator Grace Helmer.

The flipbook boasts two scenes that incorporate symbolic elements from the upcoming Riverhead titles. Helmer explains, “After [Riverhead Junior Designer Grace Han] shared the list of images that we could use to represent the books, I enlisted the help of my studio buddies. We sat round thinking up as many variations as we could until we got a few that I thought I could actually animate!” Each scene boasts 12 frames per second, and Helmer hand-painted each frame. Check out the first scene below:

And the second:

Intrigued? Here’s a list of the symbols and their corresponding books:

Coffee Cup – When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing by Daniel H. Pink: January 9, 2018

Dog – The Friend by Sigrid Nunez: February 6, 2018

Cactus Flowers – The Line Becomes a River by Francisco Cantú: February 6, 2018

Feather – Without Precedent by Joel Richard Paul: February 20, 2018

Umbrella – Awayland by Ramona Ausubel: March 6, 2018

Beach – Fisherman’s Blues by Anna Backhen: March 13, 2018

Turtle – The Female Persuasion by Meg Wolitzer: April 3, 2018

Sherriff – Beneath a Ruthless Sun by Gilbert King: April 24, 2018

Violin – The Ensemble by Aja Gabel: May 15, 2018