I think the reason dishonest or overly commercial marketing bugs us more when it comes to books than movies is that you don't have to look at a misleading trailer for a movie whenever you watch it, but people are going to see these covers whenever they pick up the new copies of the Narnia books.  

Posted by: @oldmanofarchenland

They do not possess the gentleness and sweetness and earnestness of Narnia. Rather, they are flashy and showy and far more violent than the stories. For that reason alone, that they are not in accord with the essence of Narnia, they are bad covers for Narnia. 

After establishing that they are bad covers for Narnia, we could then consider them as works of art in their own right, without reference to Narnia. I don't think they fare well from this point of view either.

Posted by: @sir-cabbage

They certainly look modernised... like a lot of children's/YA fantasy books selling in book shops right now. In that, I can't deny they could be very appealing to those coming to the series for the first time, (and I hope they help bring more fans to Narnia). Yet at the same time, because of this, do they stand out enough against other books?

I don't know, would they be appealing to children? Presumably these publishers have a reason they're making books look like this, and presumably that reason is to sell books. I guess they know what they're doing in that regard. I wonder if children are still the primary demographic of Narnia readers and book purchasers (or primary demographic for whom Narnia books are purchased). 

And what about the children/people (even if fewer in number) who do not like these covers and who therefore might never read Narnia? I don't like them, and don't think I would have liked them as a child.

Good points there. Publishers follow the trends closely, and seemingly these have a look which will attract that particular youthful age group. But yes, those children that aren't keen on the action-packed, battle fantasy that some of these covers suggest, could be put off from finding a real gem, unfortunately. (Let's hope that their parents or grandparents still have their more fitting copies? 😁)

Are these actual book covers or book jackets? Sometimes the jacket is the same as the cover of the book, but I think the books are probably plain on the outside as they are with my Narnia set.  Of course book jackets can actually help to sell the book.  I would look inside the book before deciding to buy it.  🙂

Posted by: @oldmanofarchenland

These pictures are false.

They do not possess the gentleness and sweetness and earnestness of Narnia. Rather, they are flashy and showy and far more violent than the stories. For that reason alone, that they are not in accord with the essence of Narnia, they are bad covers for Narnia. 

This is another thing I've been thinking: regardless of the merits or demerits of the artwork, I really don't think it truly captures the spirit of any of the Narnia stories themselves. I wouldn't say Owen Richardson's illustrations are altogether "bad" from an artistic perspective, but his work really does look too much like AI to me (even though it's not), and it's too similar to so many other current children's / YA fantasy cover art out there. I spend a fair bit of time in bookshops, and those new covers wouldn't stand out to me as something different from all the other ones on the shelves at the moment. But Narnia IS different from other fantasy novels / series aimed at young readers. There's a depth of meaning to it that most other books of this genre don't have.

(I say that as someone who spent much of her childhood and teenage years devouring works by other fantasy authors, after Narnia got me hooked on these kinds of books in the first place, and yet none of those other books and imaginary worlds stayed with me like Narnia did... except for Tolkien, whose works somehow had the same quality in a different way. I think most of us here would probably agree on what it is and why. I should probably also add that I was not raised in a religious family or community and was an agnostic until the age of 20, so I didn't have anybody telling me what I "should" think about these books or what I was meant to be finding in them. But I found it there anyway, even though I couldn't have put my finger on what was so special about Narnia and Middle-earth at the time.)

Earlier in the thread here, there was a mention of the previous cover illustrations for the Chronicles by David Wisener. Here's an image of them all (cribbed from an interesting post in the blog A Pilgrim in Narnia):

I don't much like most of them either — as @icarus put it, the cover for PC in particular is "flat" and "boring" (that sword could mean just about anything and tells us absolutely nothing about the story), and the dragon for VDT just looks silly and doesn't really represent the story as a whole — just one key adventure in it, for which it gives away a huge spoiler. I also think Bree on HHB looks awfully ugly! But there's one stand-out one for me, and it's LWW:

To me, that's one of the best cover illustrations I've ever seen for this particular story, and it's a pity the others by this artist aren't up to the same standard. It represents an actual scene from the story, and a vitally important and moving one at that, without giving away any spoilers. It's different from most other fantasy book covers out there, and it's striking. Aslan is looking directly at us, the viewers, with a compelling look in his eyes, which could mean a range of things — it's neither overly stern nor overly sentimental, but just draws us in and makes us wonder what this Lion is telling us. And the two girls burying their faces in his mane, as they say goodbye, are sad but not overdone; it's a nice touch that you can't see their full facial expressions and there are no visible tears, so I would say it captures the deep emotion of the scene without getting too schmaltzy.

(It's also a nice touch that Susan and Lucy have black and golden hair respectively, which is a canonical detail that the vast majority of Narnia illustrators — including Pauline Baynes herself — have never managed to get right!!)

Basically, that's one piece of Narnia artwork that I would love to have on my wall, if I could get hold of a poster-size copy. None of the new covers by Owen Richardson — or any of the other ones by David Wisener, or most of the other Narnia cover illustrations I've seen in the past — stand out to me like that as a really good representation of what this particular story is actually like.

The covers from the paperbacks of the 1970’s were rather cartoonish, and as I remember, they weren’t Pauline Baynes” illustrations.  I don’t know if anyone here remembers them. I didn’t dislike them although I didn’t care much for them either.  I remember thinking why didn’t they use Baynes’ pictures for the covers back then. And I wish they had made bigger paperbacks so they wouldn’t have to crop Baynes’ pictures.These new covers have left me with a similar feeling.  

@narnian78 You are probably thinking of the set by Roger Hane.

@icarus 

Yes, I think that he may have been the artist. l think he also drew the illustrations for the LP vinyl records. The recordings had hour long  readings of the stories voiced by actors. They looked nice on the records, although they were quite modern for Narnia at the time.  I can’t say I disliked them, but I thought Pauline Baynes’ illustrations were more true to the books.

Is it better to have book jackets with the same illustrations as the actual covers of the books?  Or should the covers have no pictures at all?  The jackets of books can become lost or they can be worn out with use or shelf wear. But they do attract people to buy a book or borrow it from a library. I think it is better to have both the book covers and jackets with illustrations by Pauline Baynes since that would best attract people to read them. This would apply to the hardcover editions. The paperbacks would probably be best with Baynes’ illustrations on the covers. Then the readers would know more about what is in the books even if you can’t judge a book’s content by its cover.