The statue on the cover depicts a statue that was in the garden in the story. In the story the statue is described as an angel covered in moss and about the size of a child. It comes to symbolize death because, according to Piper, it is associated with a legend of “a child who lived in the house hundreds of years ago and is buried in the garden” (7). The beautiful innocence of the garden is already marked by a statue that symbolizes the death of innocence and thus foreshadows the loss of innocence for the characters in the story. In the beginning the statue is covered in moss, and in the end Daisy notices the moss has been cleared away—the moss was a subtle protective covering that thinly veiled the deeper meaning of the statue, but once Edmond cleaned it off the statue’s meaning was made visible.
The top of the cover fades into a dark green forest. The story carries dark themes throughout the book so we wanted to include a dark element to the beauty of the garden.. The lettering of the title is slightly transparent, allowing the reader to look at what is behind it though a lens. That lens is the childlike innocence that the characters lose. Still being able to see the beauty of what is behind the letters says that the loss of innocence is not a loss of ever being happy again--it is simply being aware of the reality of the world. We can still view the world, and people, for all their beauty even through the filter of the mature mind.