Back in the early 2000’s I was at a children’s book conference and one of the presenters showed Harry Potter book covers produced by different countries. Apparently, when publishers bought the rights to the Harry Potter story they didn’t necessarily buy the rights to the artwork. Sometimes this was because it was cheaper for the publisher to hire their own illustrator, or maybe the publisher thought their country’s target market needed a different approach to the artwork.
I found this interesting and it stuck with me. Fast forward to 2008, when my daughter was into Harry Potter and we took a vacation to France and Germany. I suggested we look for a Harry Potter book and see if it was different. Sure enough, and a mother-daughter tradition was born. Every time either of us travels to a new country we buy a Harry Potter book.
For those not familiar with the Harry Potter story by JK Rowling, it is broken up into a series of seven books. Here are some of our early-2000’s finds. Below each of our finds is the USA version for comparison.

About the year of the 15th anniversary of the first book, publishers started to commission new artwork to celebrate (and sell more books). Probably because of the Harry Potter movies, and because the storyline became a little more dark and serious as it progressed, the book illustrations became more dark and serious. In 2014 the UK came out with a new cover series by illustrator Jonny Duddle.
I just got back from a vacation visiting Eastern Europe and found that many of the books available had these UK / Jonny Duddle covers.
It’s a bummer to me because the quarky illustrations aimed at kids have been discontinued and replaced with the same illustration style. I can still find the origianls online but that's not in the spirit of the our tradition (and at a higher collector's price).

There are still some interesting variations.


Thank you for indulging my fascination with HP cover art!
What a fine project! Your findings deserve wider distribution.