Okay, this will brand me as crazy, but I kind of love those primitive illustrations on the French covers.

I'll stand in the crazy corner with you, Sean. The UK children's edition covers seriously make my skin crawl. The French are odd and quaint and weirdly lovely.

The French are odd and quaint and weirdly lovely.

So true.

Oh, you meant the covers. Unfortunately, they get much worse as the series goes on. No more cute pilgrims. For your consideration:
Harry Potter et la Coupe de Feu
Harry Potter et l'Ordre du Phénix
Harry Potter et le Prince de Sang-Mêlé

This page shows an Argentinian, Icelandic and Japanese cover.

One of the author blogs I read was comparing international editions of the same books, and we noticed that US covers tend to strongly focus on a single individual, while the UK covers are more likely to feature a group of people or a landscape. In one case, Bujold's HALLOWED HUNT, it was the same image, but the US version was tightly cropped to focus on the protagonist, while the UK one was more protagonist-within-landscape.

A UK commenter and I got in a bit of an argument comparing US and UK covers to one of the Sharpe novels. We each preferred our nation's version, and thought the other busy and cluttered. Eventually we figured out that the UK cover seemed cluttered to me because it was a general, generic period-appropriate battle image that lacked a focal point and had no sexy rifleman in sight, while she thought the US cover was cluttered because it used too many fonts and broke up the cover by having separate blocks for the author name and title.

Anyway, yeah, different aesthetics.

Harry looks like a zombie on the Icelandic cover, IMO.

The German ones are cracking me up.

Harry looks like a zombie on the Icelandic cover, IMO.

A bloated, pompous and faintly priggish zombie at that.

I still prefer the French covers to the UK children's covers. The UK covers make me feel all hot and blushy and embarrassed for the poor book trapped inside them.

A bloated, pompous and faintly priggish zombie at that.

It looked like Dudley at first glance.

For some reason it reminds me of the schoolboys in the Spring Awakenings Musical [link]

The graphic design traditions of different countries fascinate me. It's one reason I collect stamps, and many of Japan's stamps are so damned dull for a country with such gorgeous paintings.