As the year winds down, the three of us will be posting our favorite children's and young adult book covers published in 2011. Woo.
But we want to know yours. Double woo!
Your mission: Post the titles/authors/illustrators of your favorites of 2011 (how about the top five?) in the comments here and we'll compile them into a gorgeous, celebratory post in January. Can't wait to see what you've seen!
Once again, for your consideration we present the following covers with title fonts that stand out as particularly interesting, or that function extra well as part of the design.
The image to the right/above is the cover of the picture book
The Beckoning Cat by Koko Nishizuka, illustrated by Rosanne Litzinger (Holiday House, 2009) While imitating Chinese calligraphy with our Latin alphabet can sometimes make typographers grind their teeth, I think this typeface adds a pleasing element and blends well. (If you click on the covers, most of them will "embiggen" themselves.)
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| The Firefly Letters by Margarita Engle (Holt, 2010) |
Am I wrong in thinking
Firefly Letters looks like a fantasy cover? It's actually a book of poetry based on the notes by a Swedish suffragist about her trip to Cuba. No, really. Pretty neat-o font, though.
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| Frozen Secrets: Antarctica Revealed by Sally M. Walker (CarolRhoda, coming October, 2010) |
Stunning cover image and typeface.
Frozen Secrets is a standout.
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| Lulu and the Brontosaurus by Judith Viorst, illustrated by Lane Smith (Atheneum, 2010) |
Love the juxtaposition of the slender, linear "Lulu" with the elegant "and the Brontosaurus."
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| Wild Things by Clay Carmichael (Boyds Mills/Front Street, 2009) |
The otherwise uninteresting, unbalanced cover image above (
Wild Things) redeems itself with its zingy "ransom note" style title.
Here's the deal. Let us see what you, gentle readers, like on a book jacket.
Your assignment: Sometime in the next two weeks, enter a bookstore. Head toward the children's section (you know you'll do this anyway) and maybe veer off into the teen section, too. Find a book (or two) whose cover you just love, LOVE, LURVE and then rush home to your computer or whip out your portable emailing device and tell us about it.
Send title, author (and maybe a jpg if you're so inclined) and your first name/last initial to me at carol (at) carolbrendler (dot) com. Maybe include a word or two explaining why you chose what you did. There's one rule: It can't be a book you wrote or illustrated yourself.
Alternatively, you can enter your selections in the comments below and I'll post the images and explanations when I post the others over the next 2 weeks.
To start things off, here are a couple from me:
Hot Diggity Dog: The History of the Hot Dog by Adrienne Silver, illustrated by Elwood Smith, due out from Dutton this month. Oh, gosh. I love how the hot dog itself is a photo. It's just so kitschy and diner-ish. The book's description says this book is "Garnished with hilarious illustrations." Ha ha ha ha ha, get it? As long as we don't have to see any wieners being made, I think this will be a fun one.
Here's a sassy chicklit-looking cover . . . until you read the sticky on the pail. Then the pink and green turn from sassy to sickly. This is the paperback cover for Side Effects by Amy Goldman Koss and it so intrigued me because it tells me this character is going to be battling her illness with a dose of humor. The hardcover version didn't do that. Sounds like a tricky balancing act for the author. The small print under the author's name lists actual side effects of cancer and its treatment.
I showed you mine. Now you.
Oh, gosh. What if nobody participates? Please join in or I'll feel so . . . so exposed.
As a friend wrote recently, "It's the end of the Aughts (or the Oughts, or the Should'ves)" which means it's time for The Best of the Year lists, as well as a few Best of the Decade lists. Not able to get my head around a whole decade, which stretches back to the innocent little year of 2000 (pre-Bush, pre-9/11, pre-Afghanistan, pre-Iraq, pre-Madoff, pre-bailout....), I will offer up only what my sequestered memory can handle - my Favorite Kids Book Covers of 2009, along with a few reasons why:
1.
WAITING FOR WINTER by Sebastian Meschenmoser - A strange choice, maybe. This is a quiet cover. I love the scruffy fur, the outstretched hand, the leaf (not falling, but near falling) - love the patience of it, the subdued palette, the static (perfect for its subject: waiting) scene, the elegant mix of fonts. Why have I never heard of this artists before? He's fantastic.
2.
TALES FROM OUTER SUBURBIA by Shaun Tan. You simply can't see anything behind the glass of the mask - what's in there?? If I were a kid, I'd have to buy this book just to find out. Shaun Tan is one of the most brilliant illustrators around - don't you love the barnacles at the top of the head, the suggestion of continents? It could be Jules Verne down 20,000 leagues, couldn't it?...but what are those 1950's houses doing in the background?
3.
THE LION AND THE MOUSE by Jerry Pinkney. Such an obvious choice, but how not to choose it? If you watch five-year-olds in the kids' section of a bookstore, they walk straight to it as if they're metal filings and it's a magnet. Irresistible force, that cover. I'm not convinced the book should get the Caldecott (I would have liked more text) but how to argue with the illustrations? It made all the difference, of course, not to put any title/author name on the cover, and to move the mouse so that he's only visible if you open the cover to its full length.
4.
HIGHER, HIGHER by Leslie Patricelli - simply because it's hard not to laugh when you look at it. The guy pushing her is so far-down, her smile is so up-high, and that right foot really is about to touch the clouds - don't we all remember what that feels like? Besides, I love the simplicity, the almost handwritten quality of the font, bold primary colors, and the exuberance of those exclamation marks (!!)
I like Carson Ellis's cover art for Wildwood by Colin Meloy. For starters, it's not a photograph - I'm so sick of photographs on fantasy novels - those seductive girls in their 18th-century gowns...what are those but romance-novel covers for YA fantasies? Ack! So, Wildwood gets points for being slightly old-fashioned and proud of it. Next, it's so nicely balanced, and still it moves, tangles & twists - all the little thorny vines. Love the little mouse, the bird, the two figures with swords. It's a cover to linger over (plus the minute you open the cover, you have an endpaper map - oh, joy!)
I also like the cover art for I WANT MY HAT BACK, written and illustrated by Jon Klassen. The bear looks like such a numbskull...what's not to love? Direct, basic, dumb as a stick, hilarious.