Two stories in fact, that I read in my early days of elementary school were; Trapped in Space and The Runaway Robot. These simple short stories, that I got from my school, gave me added desire to write my own adventures one day.

Cover design should be straight forward & simple, easy to read like a well designed billboard, yet striking & tell part of the story at a glance. All my cover art I make myself. Take for example my cover art for The Problem Eliminators; There you see the Submarine Barracuda coming almost straight at you, along with an armed away team as well, plus the added caption "We Strike Without Warning! Hard Fast and Deadly!" Then I added the additional caption below that lets you in on a major portion of the story, that these guys hunt down Drug Lords and their U.S. Government accomplices. Heck just seeing this art tells you that you are in for one heck of an adventure story!
My cover art for; The Maintenance Engineer gives you a no nonsense action scene that says in a picture with simple caption, that The Maintenance Engineer, the Hero of the story, won't let Anybody Mess with his ship!
I believe that my cover art matches each one of my stories pretty danged well! So should yours.

I like books that tell great stories. Sometimes Fiction or Real, either way you can learn great life lessons from them. For example, I have always learned some nifty life lessons from books such as; Star Trek & Battlefield Earth. And also History books such as; Japanese Destroyer Captain, Panzer Battles & The Real George Washington. I have over 3000 real paper books in my home collection. Everything from Sci-Fi to Action/Adventure & Historical and also children's books. Many were bought at discount or thrift stores. I rarely ever pay full price for a book as I have never had much money.