As an artist and book designer, Ellen Raskin supervised every
aspect of the book's production, working very closely with the
art director, Riki Levinson. Raskin took special care to make
her novels readable and inviting to children by assuring there
was a lot of white space on each page and by making certain that
her books never got to be more than 200 pages long. When The
Westing Game was first printed, the binder mistakenly trimmed it
1/4" short which made the printed pages look very tight,
especially to an artist's eye. The original first printing was
completely shredded and the book was reprinted at the binder's
expense. These two scans show a comparison of the way the same
page looks in both printings. The difference is also noticeable
in the cropping at the top and on the upper right side of the
jacket that's been cut to fit the smaller size book. Raskin
specifically designed her books with young readers in mind. She
firmly believed, for example, that the width of side margins
should equal the length of