We begin today with a mild pet peeve of mine. Here we go. You see this lovely new paperback edition cover of the book Neil Armstrong Is My Uncle and Other Lies Muscle Man McGinty Told Me? Well I had great affection for the original story, though I was relatively lukewarm on its first cover. The original jacket just sported an image of the moon with a little astronaut sticking in a flag. Clearly they wanted to spice things up a bit. I don’t blame them. Lots of great books see a second life in paperback when they go with a more contemporary photographed look. That said, this particular book’s new cover suffers from a current trend I’ve found in some children’s jackets. It is a whatever-you-do-don’t-make-the-kids-think-the-book-is-historical cover. Now look at it. Look long and hard. Is there anything about the hair or dress of these two kids that screams 1969 to you? You might argue “well, is there anything that looks absolutely contemporary?” and you’d be right. But they’re definitely fudging the time period. This will happen from time to time. A bit of historical fiction will end up faking its cover to look contemporary, for all sorts of reasons. Generally you can get around this if you shoot the photo close up (as with Frances O’Roark Dowell’s Shooting the Moon) or the characters backs (though I’m still pretty sure the hair on Doris Gwaltney’s WWII novel Homefront was a bit suspect). Still and all, though I peer at this new Neil Armstrong book with a suspicious eye (shouldn’t Muscle Man McGinty be wearing glasses anyway?) it’s still loads better than the original back of the jacket for A Friendship for Today by Patricia McKissack. There you saw two pairs of legs wearing jeans (on girls in the American South in the 1950s) and Airwalk sneakers. Airwalks were established in 1986, folks. My oh me oh my. Nice book, though.
- Ah! It’s that time of year again. Time for Lee & Low to hand out their New Voices Writers Award. As they say, “LEE & LOW BOOKS, award-winning publisher of children’s books, is pleased to announce the eleventh annual NEW VOICES AWARD. The Award will be given for a children’s picture book manuscript by a writer of color. The Award winner receives a cash grant of $1000 and our standard publication contract, including our basic advance and royalties for a first time author. An Honor Award winner will receive a cash grant of $500.” You can see more information here if you’re interested.
- The blog Looking Backward recently
8 Comments on Fusenews: Chicken pox for the soul, last added: 8/16/2010Display Comments Add a Comment
I loved Muscle Man McGinty, and I REALLY don’t like this cover! Thank you for articulating my feelings–I probably wouldn’t have realized exactly what was bugging me, but I agree about the trying to hide the historical nature of the book. Argh.
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Yikes! Historical fudging aside, the design on that cover is atrocious. Shame, for such a lovely little book.
Also, that’s a photo of Buzz Aldrin, not Neil Armstrong. C’mon.
Woah. Okay, Brian. I gotta ask. You’re the expert… how do you know? You’re pulling my leg here, right?
Thank you so much for the Eric Carpenter list! My oldest son is beginning 2nd grade next week, and I’m tickled to have a custom-made (as it were) booklist to share with him.
Two part answer!
First, the picture on the jacket, though cropped and upside down, is still recognizable as the most iconic of all astronaut-on-the-moon photos, and is of Aldrin. Here it is, intact: http://www.nasaimages.org/luna/servlet/detail/nasaNAS~5~5~21581~126368:Buzz-Aldrin-on-the-Moon
Second, and maybe more interestingly, there are in fact almost no pictures of Armstrong on the moon. Armstrong and Aldrin shared the camera, and while Armstrong took plenty of pictures of Aldrin, Aldrin, for whatever reason, took almost none of Armstrong. Armstrong shows up incidentally in a couple of images, but is the focus of none. The best picture we have of him on the moon was teased out of video footage taken by an automated camera: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1200725/Never-seen-photo-shows-Neil-Armstrongs-face-walks-moon.html
Consider your leg unpulled!
Unpulled it is! And what a magnificent encapsulation. I doff my hat to you, Mr. Floca. Together, I propose that you and I shall become forensic book jacket scientists. Picking apart the minutia of misbegotten covers. You handle anything that has to do with astronauts. I’ll cover anything that has to do with various cinematic versions of the film “The Phantom of the Opera” (because sadly I feel unqualified to call myself a specialist in any knowledge I acquired post 9th grade).