In my research, I came across this Scott O’Dell title, Zia (Houghton Mifflin 1976).
Cover #1 was the original cover, published in 1976. Cover #2 came out around 1981, cover #3, around 1995, and the 4th cover is upcoming – scheduled for release in January of next year.

Mulling this over… does it tell us anything about the evolution of cover design? The story is based on the true story of Juana Maria – the last surviving member of her tribe, who lived on San Nicolas Island, off the coast of southern California. One might expect her, then, to look like the Natives of that area. Which she does, on the 1976 cover.*
Six years later she looks much more European. The 1995 cover is pretty, but less focused on the character. It’s interesting that the photograph on the upcoming release looks very much like the illustration (by Ted Lewin) on the original edition. She’s lighter skinned, but it’s an amazing match in terms of her features.
An interesting group…

*I do not hold myself up as any kind of authority on any culture, so please take my opinion with a shovelful of salt… or so.

Two books with hooded women, positioned similarly: Never Cry Werewolf by Heather Davis (HarperTeen 2009), Fever Crumb by Philip Reeve (Scholastic 2010).
On Never Cry Werewolf, it is apparently an allusion to the fairy tale, but not on Fever Crumb. Definitely check out this review of Fever Crumb. You will want to read it if you haven’t already. I purchased it for my library – someone had it on a summer reading list (yay!) – so of course it’s circulating. Having read the review by Cindy Dobrez and Lynn Rutan, it’s now on my must read list!

Read the “Cover Story” for Never Cry Werewolf and take a look at the British cover for Fever Crumb.

Never Cry Werewolf: Forced to attend a camp for teens with behavior problems, sixteen-year-old Shelby Locke’s attempts to follow the rules go astray when she meets a handsome British werewolf. Ages 12+. Reviews 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
Fever Crumb: Foundling Fever Crumb has been raised as an engineer although females in the future London, England, are not believed capable of rational thought, but at age fourteen she leaves her sheltered world and begins to learn startling truths about her past while facing danger in the present. Ages 12+. Reviews 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Book trailer.

Daddy, Daddy there’s HAIR!

This is just a few examples of this year’s penchant for flying hair and hair that obscures faces. On The Girl With the Mermaid Hair by Delia Ephron (Balzer + Bray 2010), Blindsided by Priscilla Cummings (Dutton 2010), Keep Sweet by Michele Dominguez Greene (Simon Pulse 2010) and Raven Speak by Diane Lee Wilson (McElderry 2010) hair goes horizontal – usually something hair only does in wind. The raised up mermaid hair looks to be the result of spinning (look at where the hair on the other side goes). Blindsided could be wind… But the other two are not. Raven Speak holds a mishmash of things (an eye peeking through hair, a sword, a bird and a horse), put together in a way that is interesting enough, and slightly challenging in that you might not notice it right away.

So what does flying hair say? Without reading summaries… the spinning girl could indicate someone thrown off balance? On Blindsided the title and the Braille give pretty strong clues. But why does her hair obscure an eye, and show an eye that is most definitely looking at something?
Keep Sweet has the most unnatural arrangement. Why would one’s hair be wrapped around her face? On Raven Speak… she’s holding her braid over her nose?
Other notable examples for this year: Birth Marked by Caragh M. O’Brien, The Vinyl Princess by

A while back I issued a challenge. I’ve been working on an answer to my own challenge for a while now. I may add to it at some time, but I thought I’d post what I’ve got so far. What do you think?

My apologies to the readers of this blog for the scarcity of posts these days. I could continue to rant about model-y girl photos on covers, but I don’t want to beat a dead horse. I’ve been studying book covers from the 1990s trying to develop something worth saying about the representation of people of color over the years. Without any measurable data to back me up (yet anyway), I’ll just say that it’s looking like there was a lot more representation in the 90s than in the first decade of the 2000s. But I continue to work on this…

The Boy Who Could Fly by James Norcliffe (Egmont 2010): Having grown up in a miserable home for abandoned children, a young boy jumps at the chance to exchange places with the mysterious, flying “loblolly boy,” but once he takes on this new identity, he discovers what a harsh price he must pay.
Zahrah the Windseeker by Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu (Farafina 2007, Houghton 2005): Zahrah, a timid thirteen-year-old girl, undertakes a dangerous quest into the Forbidden Greeny Jungle to seek the antidote for her best friend after he is bitten by a snake, and finds knowledge, courage, and hidden powers along the way.
As You Wish by Jackson Pearce (HarperTeen 2009): When a genie arrives to grant sixteen-year-old Viola’s wish to feel she belongs, as she did before her best friend/boyfriend announced that he is gay, her delay in making wishes gives her and the mysterious Jinn time to fall in love.
The Secret Rites of Social Butterflies by Lizabeth Zindel (Viking 2008): Sixteen-year-old Maggie’s fears about making friends as an incoming senior at an exclusive New York City girls school are allayed when she is invited to join an elite secret society devoted to eavesdropping and recording the “truth” about students and faculty.

And do you blog? I have a request (a challenge?). Here it is: Do one blog post like Ian Shimkoviak’s, where you show us several different ideas you had for a book cover – and which one was chosen for final production. Some narrative would be a bonus. Shimkoviak seems to do lots of finished looking covers for a book – all different ideas. It’s fun to see the different interpretations, but he rarely adds any explanation.
If you don’t blog, and don’t mind sharing – send them to me – I’ll be happy to post them!
I’ve always wanted to do interviews of cover designers on this blog. But there’s a problem. I want real stories… things like what outrageous requests designers have had to comply with. But I don’t want anyone to jeopardize their job.
But if anyone wants to include and anonymous story here, now would be the time. We’d love to hear about it in the comments. Thanks!

So along the line of getting face covers off of YA novels…
I was sitting in my office last week and I looked up at our new YA novel display (new to us, not new in the sense of just-released) and this is what I saw:

I’m trying to imagine myself as a teen (okay, so that was a really long time ago) – a teen in the culture of today (not the ’70s…). How excited could I get about this batch? Some half-faces, some full-on faces, some fancy clothes. And gosh… I just don’t get it. Why does this work? What happened to standing out from a crowd?
It has always baffled me why it works (it must!) to attract young girls with beautiful girls in beautiful clothes. Weren’t we just talking about wanting to see ourselves, our culture, reflected in our literature? Even if you’re white, does this reflect you?

psssssssssst….. by the way, I love the cover of Hazel despite everything I’ve said, but I’ll never tell >;-)

Tanita Davis, author of Mare’s War has a great article, “Reflected Faces“, up on Hunger Mountain: the VCFA Journal of the Arts. In it she says:

It still seems as if young people with brown skin are acceptable to ignore, at least in the marketing departments where the Powers That Be have determined that Brown doesn’t equal Buy… This may seem unimportant—at least young adults of color are included in contemporary YA literature. They’re IN the books, and so if the nonwhite characters don’t make it to the cover as often, at least there are nonwhite characters, right? Shouldn’t that be sufficient when Caucasians comprise two thirds of the American population?

I’m working on a post comparing POC coverage ten or twenty years ago, with today. It’s lots of background work, so stay tuned – it’ll be up sometime!

Oh, and here’s the other article in a section they’re calling “Flipside“, “Teens Do Judge a Book by the Cover” by Mitali Perkins (in the same issue of the same journal). She says:

Get most faces OFF the covers of young adult novels.

Hear, hear!

Australian version of Best Book Covers of 2010 from Readings: Independent Bookseller of the Year 2009. I like the one at right, Tensy Farlow. It’s not available here in the U.S., though it is in the Library of Congress catalog, which makes me wonder if it’s set for publication here (?).
Here’s a book trailer for the book (love the music).

Many have commented on the “face cover.” Recently I’ve noticed some covers where one face is just not enough. Two faces – or more precisely, parts of two faces – are squeezed into the confines of a book jacket. It means that the two faces must be very close together. Most here seem to be moments of intimacy – Kiss Me Kill Me by Lauren Henderson (Delacorte 2008), Going Too Far by Jennifer Echols (MTV Books 2009), Tell Me a Secret by Holly Cupala (HarperTeen 2010), Heartbreak River (2009) and Winter Longing (2010) by Tricia Mills (Razorbill).
In my circles of friends and family, we’ve had several discussions about the kinds of photos that teens like to post on their Facebook pages. They are often like the pictures I see here – particularly on My Invented Life by Lauren Bjorkman (Henry Holt 2009). There is a physical closeness in photos that people of this generation are snapping, that people of my generation might have felt uncomfortable with.
So I wonder how these book covers fare with their target audience. I’m guessing they work well with the teen female audience.

Faces

Kiss Me Kill Me: Longing to be part of the in-crowd at her exclusive London school, orphaned, sixteen-year-old Scarlett, a trained gymnast, eagerly accepts an invitation to a party whose disastrous outcome changes her life forever. Ages 12+. Reviews

These days by the time I see a double dip (or some call them lookalikes) it’s on someone’s else’s book cover blog. But here’s one I haven’t seen spotted. What amazes me about these is how similar the cropping can be. I mean… does this photo model have a really weird mouth or something?
And so often, the chosen background color is the same, too.
Brand-New Emily (by Ginger Rue, Tricycle 2010, c2009) is more tan than TMI (by Sarah Quigley, Dutton 2009). Hair and eye-color has been changed. I always wonder how hard it is to do that.  Which one of these pictures is closer to the real girl?

TMI: Fifteen-year-old Becca has the habit of revealing too much personal information about herself and her friends, but when her boyfriend breaks up with her and she vows to stop “oversharing,” she does not realize that her blog postings are not nearly as anonymous as she thought. Ages 11+. Reviews 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
Brand-New Emily: Tired of being picked on by a trio of popular girls, fourteen-year-old poet Emily hires a major public relations firm to change her image and soon finds herself “re-branded” as Em, one of the most important teens not only in her middle school, but in celebrity magazines, as well.  Ages 12+. Reviews 1, 2, 3, 4.

Many bloggers have posted great collections of “best covers” – but this is the best set I’ve ever seen (the cover to the right is only one of the “86 Beautiful Book Covers“). They are adult book covers, not YA.
What I find delightful about this set is the variety in the design, color, and technique. I do not see this kind of variety in YA book covers. You may think it’s just because there are fewer of them, but I’m not so sure. I wonder if it’s because we (or the big bookstores, or the marketers, or whomever is ultimately responsible for what gets out there) peg YAs as a homogeneous group, easier to target because we think they’re pretty much all the same.
I’d like to call for more variety in the covers that are used to draw in the teen population. It’s time to treat them to the delightful variety seen in this group of 86.

On the left, the hardback cover of Prism by Faye Kellerman and Aliza Kellerman (Harper 2009). On the right, the paperback cover to be released in June.  This is another one of those cover changes that make me wish I could have been a fly on the wall of the room this was discussed in… While the overall look from a distance is pretty much the same, let’s look at the changes. The authors’ names shrunk. The title font changed and moved. And there’s this girl’s face looking over the horizon like a rising moon.
What’s strange, is that I prefer the paperback better. I don’t understand why, because I rarely lean toward face covers. Especially partial faces.
Don’t get me wrong -  this won’t make my best of the year list – it’s still too busy for my taste. But I think more readers will be drawn to the paperback. The text change makes a big difference, both the change of font, and the shrinking authors. Maybe the names didn’t draw the teen audience like they might have drawn adult fans.

Prism: California high school students Kaida, Zeke, and Joy fall into a parallel universe in which all resembles their normal lives except that there is no medicine nor health care, which could mean big trouble for Joy, whose arm was injured in the accident that started their troubles. Ages 12+. Review 1, 2, 3.

Travis at 100 Scope Notes has posted new covers with monarch butterflies on them. Before the monarchs, there was a spate of book covers depicting the Blue Morpho (or some other kind of blue) butterfly. With photo manipulation, who can tell for sure these days. Maybe these are just monarchs colored blue. But they’re pretty stunning! The books: The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary E. Pearson (Henry Holt 2008), Fate by Jennifer Lynn Barnes (Delacorte 2008), Fragile Eternity by Melissa Marr (Bowen Press 2009), The Secret Rites of Social Butterflies by Lizabeth Zindel (Viking 2008), Philippa Fisher and the Dream-Maker’s Daughter by Liz Kessler (Candlewick 2009) and Zahrah the Windseeker by Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu (Houghton Mifflin 2008, c2005). Just as you would expect, books with butterflies on them tend to be fantasy. They include fairies and magic, etc., though Jenna Fox is science fiction, so it’s not a perfect rule.
I went looking for online information about blue butterflies and was distressed to find that most of what’s out there on the internet is about blue butterflies made into jewelry, preserved as wall art, and even a song called “Blue Morpho” played on a panflute that looks like it has blue morpho wings pasted on it? :-( Me, I’d rather see this beautiful creature alive!

4 Comments on Before Monarchs, Blue Morphos, last added: 4/24/2010