the ARC:
the finished book:
Deirdre Baker has some pertinent thoughts (from "Musings on Diverse Worlds," Horn Book Magazine, January/February 2007):
In some cases, where the politics of inclusivity is not in the foreground of the story, the racial attributes of nonwhite heroes are rendered virtually invisible. Both Ged of Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea series and Eugenides of Megan Whalen Turner's The Thief and sequels are described explicitly as "dark-skinned." Indeed, in conversation Turner has said that the images in her head of the Eddisians were "deeply influenced by the people of the Himalayas." But the brown skins of Ged and of Eugenides are downplayed by the books' current cover art, which shows Ged to be as bronzed as a white surfer (The Tombs of Atuan, 2001 edition) and Eugenides to have a noticeably pink and white complexion (The King of Attolia, 2006). While the texts give nonwhite readers the opportunity to see themselves reflected in these heroes, the cover art is telling them something else.
I'm glad this cover art changed its mind!
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By: Roger Sutton,
on 12/12/2007
Blog: Read Roger - The Horn Book editor's rants and raves (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Covers, Fantasy, Intercultural understanding, Graphic design run amok, Add a tag
By: Roger Sutton,
on 7/1/2007
Blog: Read Roger - The Horn Book editor's rants and raves (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Graphic design run amok, Add a tag
If we decide to go with the flow and think of factoid as describing a true yet trivial thing, I want a word to describe a true, trivial, but oddly compelling experience such as the following, which I share with you here for no other reason than I cannot stop obsessing about it.
The other night we took some friends to see Kiki & Herb's "Year of Magical Drinking" show, itself oddly compelling (Kiki on her upbringing: "if you weren't molested as a child then you must have been ugly") but not what I wanted to tell you about. Before the show we had dinner at Sibling Rivalry, a restaurant whose conceit is that its two chef-brothers create dueling recipes with the same main ingredient. The food was fabulous but the menu made me a little crazy. It listed the dishes on offer in two columns, one for each chef, and headlined each row of two with the featured ingredient, so you'll get, say, two choices starring green tomatoes. At the top of the menu was printed something like "Large plates/Small plates/Entrees/Appetizers" but I could find nowhere on the menu anything to tell me which dish was what, although you could mostly guess from the prices. It bugged the hell out of me that the menu would mention that it listed both appetizers and main courses but would not tell you which was which, so I asked the waiter what was going on. "Are you color-blind?" he asked in return, and upon my affirmative response went off to retrieve a copy of the color-blind menu they apparently keep on hand for so disabled guests. This new menu, marked on the back with a piece of bedraggled masking tape with the words "color-blind menu" penciled upon it, looked very similar to the regular menu, save for the fact that some of the items were printed in italic, a distinction that had been made clear to my dining companions by the strategic use of black and red type on the normal-people menu.
Why, Lord, why? Why, Lord, why? If the appearance of color-blind people in your restaurant is an occurrence frequent enough to require you to print and bind an alternative menu exclusively for their use, you might want to rethink your original design, yes?
It's the little things that haunt us.
Oh, that makes me so crazy! I never understand why I never see anyone else point it out, either. Glad they got on the ball with this one.
Oh my goodness, the second model looks like my son ... For once a brown boy's a hero!
I'm not at home (power's still out due to ice storm) so I can't cite the exact source, but in one of her essays, Ms. LeGuin talks about how publishers hate to have interracial characters on book covers because it supposedly reduces sales. She's had lots of trouble with this in the past. Too bad they haven't figured it out yet!
The second kid has way better hair for a hero.
It's not just fantasy. I have always been outraged by the cover of Chris Crutcher's Whale Talk, which shows a white boy running. The protagonist is, in his own words, "African-American, Japanese-American and what? Northern European-American?" And a swimmer.
Even on the paperback edition, the cover is unchanged.
the artist didn't read the book (maybe had a precis or flap copy from first edition), the art director knew it was an IMPORTANT BOOK but hadn't read it, the editor who was "handling" the reprint had seventeen other projects, Sales and Marketing approved the art - and that's what really matters.
_Whale Talk_ was the book that first made me aware of this issue. I've been seeing more subtle disguising in the last couple of years - instead of showing someone who looks white, they hide the issue by showing just the characters legs. Still pisses me off. And I have never seen any reviewer besides me mention it, which pisses me off even more.
Anon, this is a new book, not a reprint. I'm guessing the art department just went for standard-fantasy-boy-hunk-hero, which defaults to white, until somebody said "wait a minute." The point is that they did change the cover to accurately reflect the book, which is what we want, yes?
I seem to remember Ursula Le Guin complaining about this issue when they made a TV version of the Earthsea books a while back and cast the very white Shawn Ashmore as the male lead.
In addition, am I the only one who thinks this is a really, really cheesy cover irrespective of the ethnic issue? You'd think they'd do better for an author this distinguished. It looks like a comp they threw together in about ten minutes.
So many meetings, so little taste...
Betsy Bird recently pointed out how the character of Sticky Washington was changed from brown to white on the cover of The Mysterious Benedict Society. Whoops.
As for Whale Talk, I always assumed the kid on the cover was supposed to be the mentally retarded character -- the one who wants to wear his older brother's letter jacket, and who is white. Eh, it's a pretty lame cover nonetheless.