Would definitely pick this up out of interest in reading it to my kid.

I feel like something might be missing from the upper parts of the cover, but it’s hard to say what, since it makes a lot of sense that you’ve gradiented it up to a more bare area to not distract from the image or text.

I might think keeping it simple but extending some sort of “background noise” like the grass and flowers further up the page is worth a try.