Q. I’m editing a bibliography on children’s books, and I need to distinguish between authors and illustrators. While some books make this easy and identify the illustrator on the covers, other books don’t make this distinction until the title page or the copyright page. My question is whether it’s acceptable to use the information on these subsequent pages to distinguish authors from illustrators or if I should go strictly by the cover page and list both names in the author position if the cover doesn’t distinguish between the two.
A. It’s usual to list authors and editors (translators, illustrators, etc.) according to the title page of a book rather than the cover. Even when author and illustrator are given equal typographic treatment, the author’s name almost always comes first, without qualification, and as a rule the illustrator is explicitly identified as such. Please see CMOS 14.73, 14.76, and 14.104.