Posted by Peter Ceresole on May 12, 2013 at 00:55:33 user PeterC.
In Reply to: Re: Secret Water posted by Jon on May 09, 2013 at 12:24:37:
Thus my conjecture that the original illustration was cut down - it's rare in any of the other books for the illustrations to not have borders, while it's fairly common in SW
You may well be right. For instance, two of the completely borderless illustrations in my JC '48 copy, 'Speedy' and 'Splatchers' sit oddly on the page- more expansive than usual, as though somebody had decided to give them more emphasis. Whereas the more 'classic', cooler AR picture of 'Like steering through a flooded field' is fully bordered. Mind you, so is 'Signal of distress', which is full of internal action.
It looks as though the picture layout and editing may have been done by several different people- well at least two- with slightly differing ideas, which weren't reconciled at a final stage. Given when the book was put to bed, at a very stressful time, this might not be totally surprising.