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The Hardcover to Paperback Switch: Five to Consider

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I told someone recently I keep a list of books that have had cover changes when they’ve gone from their initial hardcover printings. Although there have been a number of changes in just the last three years I’ve been blogging, there seems to be an even greater number of cover swaps in the last year or so. Even more interesting to me than the cover changes are the pair of books here that got both cover changes and title changes.

Eileen Cook’s Unraveling Isobel (reviewed here by Kim) is getting a cover change that I’m a little bit torn about.  I think the hardcover stands out quite a bit: the color is bright and vibrant, and I like the use of the leafy swirls from the font through the entire image. The cover fits the story quite well, though I find the Photoshopping of the model’s crotch area to be really disturbing (you can’t see it so well in the digital images but it’s visible in the physical copies). This is ultimately a story about mental illness, and I feel like the cover subtly hints at this.

However, one of the things I remember about this book was that there is a notable romance. While it didn’t necessarily work for me, I noted that that would be the sell for many teen readers. The paperback cover knocks it out of the park then, in terms of making it clear there is romance in Cook’s novel. Maybe what I find most interesting, though, is the treatment of title and author in the switch from the hard to paper covers: in the hardcover, the title takes up much more space than the author’s name, whereas in the paperback, the author’s name has much more prominence than the title. In fact, the title almost gets a little lost in the image itself. And although the image is fairly generic, it fits the story.

I don’t know if one cover is better than the other; rather, they seem to appeal to two entirely different readerships. The hardcover seems to appeal to those looking for a non-romantic thriller (which is how the flap copy reads, despite a blurb that calls the book sexy) and the paperback seems to appeal to those looking for a story with romance. The paperback edition of Unraveling Isobel will be available in October.
  

I read John Cusick’s Girl Parts a couple of years ago and was pretty put off by the cover. It’s a story about a boy who suffers from a mental illness whose parents choose to purchase him a companion bot in order to help him deal with the challenges arising from his illness. The companion doll, however, happens to fall for a different boy completely. So while the cover makes sense, there are a couple of problems: first, it’s unabashedly packaging a girl for consumption and the title doesn’t help a whole lot, either. Neither do the stickers on her body that call her “fragile.” Obviously, these make sense because the story is about a companion bot, but the use of a live model rubs me all sorts of wrong. The other problem I have with this cover is that, while this book has strong appeal for male readers, the cover won’t sell it to them. It’s a pretty girl.

The paperback, though, does this book a huge favor while still getting to what the story’s about. The girl is finally gone, and instead, we only have the image of bubble wrap. It’s entirely neutral, which gives it wide reader appeal. The title font is the same as the hardcover, and it works because it gets at the robotic element to the story. One of the big additions to the paperback cover is the tag line, which reads “Can a custom-made girl-bot fill a boy’s needs?” Rather than use the girl on the cover, the tag line does an effective (and much less wince-inducing) job of showing what the book is about. I like this rendition of the cover much better, even if the “fragile” sticker still rubs me wrong — it makes sense, of course, but any time fragile is applied to a book about a girl without agency, I can’t help myself. Girl Parts is available in paperback now. 

Technically, this is a paperback to paperback cover change, rather than a hardcover to paperback switch. You can check out the hardcover edition here (and I’ll say I much prefer both versions of the paperback to the hardcover which bothers me not because it’s risque but because it’s so blank and empty). Although I haven’t read Doing It, I’m pretty familiar with the content of the book, and I think that the original paperback cover on the left hits all the right notes for me. It is awkward. I love that we only get to see the guy and the girl from the waist down, and I think so much it said in the way the guy’s hand lays on the girl’s lap. I also think there’s a lot implied in the way the guy and the girl have their legs in the image. The only thing I don’t care a lot for in the original paperback cover is that it’s a little dark. The colors bleed together a bit: the people blend into the furniture which blends into the background, too. It’s just the title and author that stand out because of their bright color and center-stage placement.

The new paperback — available now — definitely gets rid of the color blending issue. This cover is bright. Despite being remarkably similar to the original paperback cover, the changes are interesting ones. The floor isn’t carpet anymore and the couch isn’t floral but an orange-red. Maybe most noteworthy, though, is that the girl in the image is no longer wearing anything on her legs. They’re bare, and the boy is no longer placing his hand tentatively on her thigh; he’s running it along her leg. His foot is also rubbing against hers. There’s an interesting contrast in the body language between the new paperback and the original, in that the tentativeness and awkwardness of the first seems to have disappeared in the second. Instead, it’s been replaced with more comfort in the situation, at least in the guy’s positioning. The girl in the image still has a hesitance in her body language. I like how the title and author name are treated in this cover, and I think it’s interesting they’ve added a tag line to the newer version: “Everyone’s thinking about it, but are they . . .”

I can’t say I prefer one of the paperback covers better than the other, but I wish I could take elements of the first and combine them with elements of the second to make the perfect version of this cover. I’d love to take the body language of the first and mash it up with the setting of the second. 

I read Mary Jane Beaufrand’s book as The River a couple of years ago, and the mystery woven within the frame of the story of la llorona kept me hooked. It’s also a book I’ve talked to teens and they’ve been drawn to it for the same reasons. For me, the original cover and original title of the book work. I love how there’s so little to it: it’s a few wisps of hair, an image of the water, and the tag line that implies the story is a mystery: “What dark secrets does the river hold?” The colors in the cover work, too. I love the light/dark juxtaposition, as it further alludes to the mystery. What doesn’t work for me is a little thing, and that’s the blurry title font and treatment (it’s less noticeable digitally). Worth noting is that the title is much bigger than the author’s name, which is tiny and shoved in the bottom corner of the cover. It’s a little lost. If there’s something worth noting about the original cover, though, it’s that it looks much more like an adult novel than a YA novel.

This book not only gets a new look in paperback, it gets an entirely new title: Dark River. While this doesn’t sound like a huge change, it is a pretty big one. Even bigger, I think, than the image on the cover being swapped. I always think about cover changes as a librarian, and I can’t help but wonder if the title change will lead to a lot of confusion. I foresee some duplicate purchasing of this book, and I foresee frustration about cataloging in the event of duplicate purchases. That said, I think the new title is a better fit for the story and a better fit for the YA market. The image on the cover of the girl underwater explains it perfectly. I think it’s interesting to note that the title treatment is stronger than in the original hardcover, and the author’s name is much bigger and bolder, right at the top of the book, rather than hidden in the corner. Note, too, the change in the tagline for the story: “What deadly secrets does the river hold?” As a whole, this cover looks much more than a traditional mystery to me than the original. Dark River is available now as a paperback.

I read and raved about Janet Ruth Young’s The Babysitter Murders last year. I don’t think the book got a whole lot of attention, which is part of why I suspect this one is getting a major makeover. The original cover stands out to me because it is so different from most other YA books. The image is really straightforward and there’s little going on in the background. The title is allowed to stand out, and the title sort of indicates what’s going on in the image (the babysitter is there with her charge). What’s sort of uncomfortable about the cover is that this happy picture is then set against the notion of this book being about murder. The font for the title and for the author are also bright and happy. It’s a bizarre contrast, but more than that, the cover looks very much like an adult book cover to me. There’s nothing about it that seems like it would appeal to teens. Even though it stands out, I don’t know if it does so in a way that would reach teens.

Young’s book is not only getting a new cover in paperback, it’s getting an entirely new title: Things I Shouldn’t Think (available in November). Let me start with the easy part, which is the new cover itself. I don’t think it does any favors for the book at all. It’s the same generic girl face with her hair over her eye and nose that seems to be on so many paperback covers, and her expression tells us nothing. In the first cover, the happy image is uncomfortable because of the title, but that uncomfortable feeling works because that’s what the story is ultimately aiming to do to the reader. This one misses so many marks and does little for the book since it looks like everything else out there. As for the title change, though, I am a huge fan. Things I Shouldn’t Think gets right to the heart of the story, which is about a girl struggling with the “C” side of having OCD. What she thinks is what she shouldn’t be thinking. The Babysitter Murders is a tiny bit misleading and I would go so far as to say potentially a spoiler in and of itself. But as much as I like the title change, I dislike the treatment on the cover. I don’t like that it’s not capitalized nor that it’s on a strip of black above the girl’s face. And like the original cover, it’s interesting to note that the author name is tiny, at the bottom, and hard to spot.

Something else worth mentioning about this book’s change is the flap copy. Here’s the original, and here’s the updated version. The first talks around the OCD, while the second hits it head on and uses it as a selling point. I think the second does the book a huge favor in that hitting the mental illness aspect of the book will sell it to readers (which is good, since the new cover is doing no favors). I’m not sure either of these covers are getting the book to the right readers, but I do think the new title is an improvement. Thanks to Courtney for pointing this change out to me.

What are your thoughts? Any of these covers doing it better as a paperback than in a hardcover? What about the title makeovers?

Level 2 by Lenore Appelhans: Cover & (P)review

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Over the last couple of years of blogging, I’ve had the chance to meet so many great people, and one of them is Lenore Appelhans. We had the chance to spend quite a bit of time together at last year’s BEA, where we talked about books we loved, about authors we’re huge fans of, and about her book. Since then, we’ve talked more often than not, and earlier this year, she approached me about beta reading Level 2. It meant a lot to be asked to offer feedback and suggestions and I was so excited to do it for her.

I can’t imagine how nerve-wracking it was for her to ask that, but I’ll tell you this much: I was just as nervous to read and give honest feedback on her story. It’s a different world than when you’re reading a finished book and review it. You have to remove your own preferences or preconceptions of genre and instead evaluate the story as it stands. You also have to completely separate story from writer, too, in a way that’s much more challenging than when you review a book.

I was scared, too, because Level 2 wasn’t my kind of book.

As I was reading and offering feedback, though, I found myself invested in this story. These characters were so well-developed and the world was well-built. It’s never quite clear who is good and who is bad, and what the characters tell you about themselves doesn’t necessarily end up being the case. There’s palpable and fierce romantic tension here, too.

But before I offer you up my review — which is less a review and more a recommendation because I cannot possibly review this book without bias — Lenore asked me if I’d be willing to share the full finished jacket of her book. You’ve already seen the behind-the-scenes work of what went into the creation of the jacket, but what I’ve got here is the full deal.

When I first saw this cover, I fell in love. Aside from fitting the story so well, it avoids many of the things I don’t care for in YA covers. First, it’s bright: this is a book that’s going to stand out on bookshelves because it’s white and pinkish orange, a combination that pops. The use of the circles all over exist in the story. The cover model, who looks a little bit like Bjork, is how I imagined Felicia to appear. She’s facing readers in the image, and it’s clear she is pained. It’s clear she’s aching. But rather than looking passive, the girl on the cover here doesn’t look like she’s ready to just take it. The tension in her body language says she’s going to fight.

If there were a few words I could use to describe Felicia, Level 2‘s main character, they would be pained, aching, and….a fighter.

The cover is so clean and crisp, and that’s precisely how I imagined the world of Level 2. But there’s something amiss in a world that’s so sterile. And I think this captures that well. I’m also a huge fan of how the title and author name is sideways, and that style is mimicked on the chapter headings, too.

Anyone who follows me on Goodreads has probably seen my comments on this title already, but now that the cover’s out there, I’m going to share them again here. Before I do, I want to put the disclaimer out there that I read this in manuscript form — well before this made it to galley form — and some elements of the story have been changed since my read.

Felicia’s life in Level 2 is comfortable. She’s got everything she needs, and she’s able to be so content because she can slip into her machine and relive her memories. Except she is unable to be happy because she can’t put her finger on what happened to her. The problem is she keeps reliving a memory that breaks her heart: she keeps living through the time she lost her chance with Neil, the boy she’d fallen for. When she’s about to reach the truth, it slips away from her cruelly.

So when Julian shows up in Level 2 and promises he can reunite Felicia with Neil, she jumps at the chance to know the truth about her life, her death, and to reunite with Neil.

Appelhans’s debut is a dystopia with a dash of the supernatural, written in compelling, action-packed prose. What seems like a fairly straightforward story of escaping from what looks like a utopian world — Level 2 — turns out to be something much more sinister. Felicia is caught between two worlds, and the success or failure of either and both depend upon her. The story is told both in the present and in the past, through Felicia’s memories, which gives the reader not only a sense of who she is now, but a real feel for the whole girl who has lost so much in her life.

What made this book work for me was that it’s never clear cut who is good and who is bad. It’s easy to see Felicia as the good girl, but there are many times I wondered if she wasn’t. If she was just as bad as people like Julian…or if Julian himself was even bad. He did offer Felicia a chance to meet Neil again, even if it meant giving away a part of herself. When it looks like he wants to do nothing more than use her as a tool, he flips the switch and gives readers (and Felicia) reason to wonder if he really DOES want the best for her. That he’s not being selfish and greedy. Appelhans does a great job of never hand-holding the reader.

I’m not a romantic, but the moments between Felicia and Neil made my heart swell quite a bit, especially since it was so uncertain. But I can so see readers thinking they’re very wrong for each other. That Julian is the person to whom Felicia should give her heart. There’s also the question of whether Felicia deserves to be with anyone, given her less-than-perfect history.

Level 2 is a complete story, though there are enough threads left open to warrant another installment. 

As a thanks for giving feedback, Lenore sent me a copy of the soundtrack she made while writing the story (and German chocolate!).  If I could pick one song that really captures the essence of Level 2, it would be this: 

Interested yet? Make sure you head over to Lenore’s blog for a chance to win an ARC of Level 2 and add this book to your Goodreads shelves here. Level 2 is slated for a January 15, 2013 release.

Cover Repackaging & Reaching New Readers

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I love looking at what publishers choose to do with recovering “classic” YA titles. They take a book that’s done well and still in print and give it a new look, hoping to not only keep it relevant to today’s aesthetics but also in hopes of reaching new readers. Here are a few repackaged titles and for the most part, I really like them (even if some fall into the trappings that bother me).

The top two are the first two books in Jodi Lynn Anderson’s Peaches series and were originally published in 2006 (did you know those were Alloy properties? I just learned that). The bottom are the recovered releases. While both the redesigned covers are half girls, I think they are pretty good. They’re very contemporary and I can see teen girls looking for contemporary fiction picking these up without any question as to what kind of story they’ll get. I don’t mind the original covers, actually, but I think they might look a little young and more middle grade than they do YA. I prefer the title and author treatment on the redesign to the original because I think they stand out a little more/look a little more modern. The redesigned covers actually remind me a lot of the repackaged cover for Laurie Halse Anderson’s Catalyst.

I don’t mind the original cover, especially because I think the fact it’s illustrated is unique. That said, I really like the redesigned cover and think it will again stand out to teens. I love how the math element is woven into the image and the girl looks sad without necessarily looking weak (she’s not in the story). I appreciate how the new cover still has the orange hue to it, like the original one. As far as the title and author font, the new one works and I think it’s interesting (and good!) that they’re doing the author name placement in the same way they’re doing it for all of Sarah Dessen’s books. 

I dig these redesigns for Caroline B Cooney’s Janie series a LOT. I remember reading all of these books repeatedly when I was younger, and I think this new look will get new readers to pick them up. I’ve done a cover retrospective on Cooney before (and apologies — some of the images need to be resaved/uploaded). The image on the left is one of the original covers while the one on the right is the new design.

I love how it’s gotten a new creepy vibe. This feels so much more contemporary than the prior cover. It’s simple and easy on the eyes and I think that’s what makes it so appealing.

The mouth popping out of the radio? That could give me a nightmare or two. I guess the one thing that I don’t think works great on the redesigns of these books is the font and size of the title. Seems like it could be bolder or easier to read if it were larger. But the use of a single image in the center of an otherwise black cover just works for me. It has impact.

There are the other two in the series. I appreciate how all of the recovered books still have something reminiscent of the originals to them, too. All of the Cooney recovers are what the current ebook covers are, and they’ll be available in paperback next month.

Do you prefer the older covers? The newer ones? Can you think of any other books that have been out for a couple or more years that have been recovered? 

Cover Trends & The Female Body

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I’ve talked about how ya book covers don’t portray fat girls on them. I’ve talked about girls under water as a cover trend (and I could add even more to the list now). I’ve also talked about the use of windswept hair on covers, too (this one I could add tons of books to, too). If you haven’t read Rachel Stark’s post about the trend of elegant death, which ties into the girls underwater trend, I suggest diving into it. There’s also a great post over at Ellen Oh’s blog about why the sad white girls in pretty dresses cover trend needs to stop. 

In thinking about these covers and thinking a lot more about the notion of gendering books, I’ve really found myself finding fault with a lot of ya covers. More specifically, the ones marketed to teen girls. Aside from the fact so many of these covers look exactly the same, they tell us a lot about the female body and what it can or should do.

Think about it for a second. We’ve moved from using illustrations to using stock photos for the bulk of ya covers. This means we’re selling an image on a book now, hoping that readers will pick up a story based on the image on the front. We want it to be attractive and we want it to entice people. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that purpose and on the surface, there’s nothing wrong with making that cover as attractive as possible. The problem emerges, though, when we step back and actually look at what messages we’re sending within the images. Part of why many believe books are gendered — why some books are for boys and some are for girls — is because of the images and what they’re doing or saying. Even if the story itself doesn’t have a message about the female body within it, readers, especially teen girls who are already bombarded with a sickening number of messages about their bodies thanks to every other media they encounter, the cover is telling them something. It’s further offering up beliefs about the ideal image. It’s not just teen girls getting and internalizing the messages though; teen males are, too. They’re seeing books as gendered and they’re also internalizing those messages, which only continues the cycle. We sell the female body on book covers in a way we don’t on male book covers.

Much of this isn’t new territory in terms of trends or messages, but that’s maybe what I find most troubling. Aside from the problems of these covers not being unique or interesting or memorable (which as I’ve mentioned before is a disservice to both the author who has written a distinct book and to the reader who deserves to know that the book isn’t the same as every other one out there), these are only further selling messages that are troubling. Further widening the gap and notion that there are “girl” books and there are “boy” books.

I’ve dug out a ton of interesting cover trends emerging this year in ya fiction and they’re all worth spending a little time thinking about. Some say a lot more than others, but they all have some sort of message within them about the value, power, role, and meaning of the female body.

Girls are submissive

In each of these covers, we have a girl either curled up or sprawled on the ground. Their body language speaks to their submissiveness, their weakness. In the first two, the girls are not balled up, and while it could come off as a moment of power and ownership of their bodies, it doesn’t. The way that their hair falls behind them and the way their dresses hang loosely detract from that ownership because they’re made to look needy. Like they need help or protection. Moreover, the expression and gaze in the image suggest a powerlessness (in the case of the first image) and, more troubling, a “come hither” look in the second image. The second cover reads so sexual to me, and it’s not in an empowering way; it’s instead very need-driven. Sure the cover fits with the fairy tale elements to the story, but the blatant appearance of need sends a message, however subtle, about the need to be demure to be attractive and gain attention. The third cover is maybe the most problematic for me in that it’s not only the girl on the ground, but she’s giving up completely, via her expression and her arms.

In the following three covers, the girls have their faces buried or partially obscured from view. They’re hiding themselves from the world, making themselves small and invisible.

To make the message about submissiveness and weakness more obvious, in all of the covers, the girls are all dressed in highly feminized dresses and skirts. For me, these covers drive home a statement about how girls should and shouldn’t feel. The traditional female attire, the skirt and the dress, is put in play with girls who are physically broken and aching. That their faces are hidden, either partially or fully, suggests that ladies shouldn’t feel things that aren’t pleasant because it’ll break them. The other message I pull from these covers is that of a need for rescue and protection. Where the second cover offers the sexualized version, the fourth cover romanticizes it via the expression on her face, and the third cover has a girl simply giving up and giving in.

I don’t necessarily think that having a girl lying on the ground is a problem in and of itself on a cover. It’s the manner in which it’s depicted in each of these that bothers me, since it necessarily equates the feminine with the weak, the demure, the needy. The body in each of these covers becomes the message. Because if you look at those and look at the cover below — also a girl on the ground — there is a marked difference in the message.

Bodies are to judge

 

When I started rounding these images together, my first thought was there were far fewer headless bodies this year than in years past, but it’s still a pretty sizable number. This trend bothers me because it’s nothing but a show of bodies in one capacity or another — and since it’s the female body, it becomes the object of judgment, whether good or bad. There are no faces or expressions to give insight into what the inner workings of the girl being rendered. She is literally a body to look at and nothing more. While this works in terms of the fact it allows readers to picture what the girl would look like visually for themselves, the problem is the message of the headless body, period.

The bulk of these covers feature the female body in decidedly feminine clothing. The images are all of female bodies in form-fitting dresses, which play into our beliefs about the female ideal, both in terms of shape and size, but also in terms of dress. If you haven’t read Charlotte Cooper’s fantastic essay on the notion of the “headless fatties,” take a few minutes and do so. Even though all of the girls in the images above are thin, the idea the content of the book is being sold through the image of the idealized body on the front is troubling. Not only are these covers further suggesting that bodies sell products, but they’re furthering the idea that there is an ideal body and that ideal body is what makes something (in this case, a story) appealing. The girl attached to the body doesn’t matter.

Although I don’t think the covers below excuse the problems of the headless body all together, the fact they feature girls dressed more like an average teen girl make them more stand out. I like both of these because while they are bodies, they’re girls who are in the midst of some sort of activity, suggesting they’re more than simply their bodies (the one cooks! the other one plays sports!). These are girls who do things, rather than are things in and of themselves.

Girls are made of parts


This trend isn’t as prominent as it was in the past, but it’s still out there. To be fair, some of these are simply set up this way because of their design (Reunited, for example, has the map to obscure anything but the girls’ legs). Regardless, what all of these covers have in common is they home in on one particular feminine body part. There are legs in more than one image, and they’re perfect legs. There are lips.  There’s the long neck and cleavage. The clavicle. These are all representative of ideals but more than that, they’re delicate. In some cases, they’re breakable parts and in others, they’re parts meant to be protected (check out the expression and the hand in The Academie). These girls aren’t fully imagined, but rather, they’re composed of their parts, and thus, we have a similar problem with the representation as we do when we have a headless body. My biggest problem with these particular covers, though, is less the delicacy and feminization of certain body parts, but instead, that they’re all identical, mix-and-match parts. Like they could belong to any female and not one specifically. It makes these girls all the same.

The last one I’ve talked about before and even though it’s not a cover out this year (it came out last year as a repackaging), it illustrates my point so well I can’t not talk about it. The combination of individual body parts on each of the individual covers that then make up a very thin, very disturbing image of a female when put together really bothers me. This may be the most problematic cover choice I’ve seen in YA fiction. Not only is the girl completely objectified here, both by her parts and her whole, but she is made of nothing solid. She will disappear!

 Only from the backside 

 

Other people have noticed this trend this year, right? The photo of the girl from the backside usually is of her full body. The thing worth noting in these images is that most are wearing the same tell-tale dresses from the headless bodies. Not all of them are, though, which is refreshing. Those who are not in dresses, though, almost all have their butts in the image, and it draws our attention for one reason or another (the very short shorts or the very fitted jeans with a paintbrush poking out of it or the katana just inches away or the bikini bottoms). Our eyes are drawn right to that body part, even in the bulk of the dress images, as we see the dresses either form-fitted or flowing away from there. While I could go on about the meaning behind that, what’s more problematic for me in these images is that every single one features a girl with long, flowy hair. That’s another idealized female trait, and we have no shortage of it here. There’s little to no diversity at all in length or style or even color.

Notice, too, the bulk of these girls are holding themselves tight and closing themselves off. Their hands lay at their sides. They’re not exploring or thinking. They’re simply existing. So many of them have interesting things going on around them, but they themselves are anything but interesting. They’re so stock that they’re simply part of the scenery, part of the story, rather than the story itself. Girls are the props here, not the actors.

Lucky for us, these aren’t the only backs of girls covers this year. There are more!

These two feature not only the hair (and the second features the form-caressing dress), but both of these also give us angel wings. Perfection.

All four of these covers feature the back of a girl, but this time she’s at least looking over her shoulder. The first is somewhat coy. The second two show a girl exhibiting some sort of fear or fright. The last one is a much tougher girl. But all four of them feature the self-same long, flowy hair. Even when there is an opportunity for a kickass girl in the last cover, she’s stuffed into a tight, form-fitting dress. Where she could escape the company, instead, she’s tossed right in with it. This isn’t to say that a kick ass, powerhouse of a girl can’t wear a dress and still be strong, but when she’s out of the same fabric as everyone else wearing a pretty dress with long hair, she loses her power by association. By simply being flooded out by all of these other images of what a girl looks like.

Why can’t more backs of girls give us this?

In the first cover, notice there’s not long flowy hair! The girl has a hat on. She’s wearing a long coat and not a dress. She’s engaging and welcoming her world. In the second, the girl is welcoming us into her world. These are markedly different than the other covers above, even though they employ such similar styles. The messages are a entirely different and much, much less problematic. As for the last cover, I can’t quite tell whether or not her hair is short or just pulled back, but it’s DIFFERENT. It shows variety in form and styling, and I appreciate that.


This is only the tip of the iceberg as far as covers featuring girls that are troubling to me. There are numerous other instances of girls cowering, of girls with their eyes cover or obscured, of girls who are wrapped in the protective grip of their male counterparts. Each of these covers on their own are not problematic — in fact, many of the covers I’ve talked about are ones that I like or I find appealing and would pick up. But taken as a whole, there’s a problem worth talking about. We’re giving readers, particularly female readers, certain images. We’re selling books and stories with images that are telling us entirely different stories.

Please note that there are no fat girls on covers so far this year. We’re still fixated on an idealized body, which is thin and toned. We’re also not getting covers that feature people who may not have every part of their body or may not have long, silky hair, or who may not have perfect skin or pouty lips or delicate, “feminine” features. There’s little to no variation on that whatsoever. Looking through what we’re getting on YA covers, the ideal is the thin girl, wearing a well-fitting dress, who has curves and long, flowing hair. I’m not sure if that represents many of those in the target readership for these books. More than that, though, it’s instilling the notion of perfection not just for girls, but we’re giving it to boys, too. Not only are they picking up on the cues, however subtle or not, about what a female should look like, they’re also picking up the message that these books aren’t meant for them. The contents are for girls.

If covers continue to offer the same thing and offer the same troubling images of the female body, we’re going to continue teaching the notion that one size fits all and that there is one ideal. We’re going to continue teaching the notion that Jennifer Lawrence’s portrayal of Katniss wasn’t right because she was “too fat.” We’re going to continue to teach that females can only be one Thing or they’re nothing (that Thing being perfect, of course). We’re going to continue judging ourselves and others against some false standard of beauty. As much as books aren’t the “mainstream media,” and as much as they aren’t tabloids or television or magazines, they’re still reaching a sizable portion of the population. And YA books, aimed at a particularly impressionable audience, are selling these same problematic notions of gender and of the role and purpose and use of the female body.

Know what YA could offer more of and challenge all of these messages with? Covers like this:

Talk about flipping gender norms on their head. We have a girl who can wear a dress, shoot a bow, be an average size, exist as the force in her scene (rather than as the background), have confidence in her mission, and look fierce as hell.

Here are a few others I think are taking things in the right direction. I do not in any way believe all girls need to look fierce or powerful on a cover because that would be limiting what girls can and cannot feel or look like. But I DO like when I see it because it is rare, and I think the first cover not only nails strong, but she is also dressed like your average teen girl (you know, minus the sickle, which she is owning, rather than having it own her). The second cover gives us a face but it’s so shadowed it’s hard to distinguish what the face looks like, leaving a lot to the reader’s imagination. And while I’m making a huge assumption it’s even a girl, there’s the possibility it’s not. Ambiguity is not a bad thing! The third cover features a girl in a dress, but look how she’s engaging in her world. She’s not a prop. She’s the actor. The fourth cover features a girl who has a great expression on her face, but more than that, she’s weak and vulnerable without being submissive. She’s small, but she’s not diminished. The last cover, offers us a girl with a great expression with her eyes. I love, too, that her hair is pulled back from her face so we can actually see the expression.

What these covers all do is make the person a person, rather than an object. Rather than something to be assessed and judged against some standard. These girls are owning their stories, their bodies, their worlds, rather than having us do it for them. The covers, despite not being diverse in the sense that they portray girls of differing shapes and colors, ARE diverse in that they offer us girls who aren’t of the mix and match variety. Who can’t be substituted for one another in any other covers. We get girls who can be strong as hell in a stress and who can have fun in a dress. We’re not sizing up their bodies. We’re instead exploring the whole of them as individual people.

That is what makes a book appealing.

Covers Change the Story: More Hardcover-Paperback Swaps

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Sometimes I wonder if I spend more time thinking about cover art on books than reading the books themselves. But then I look over at my to-review pile and remind myself it’s all part of the process. Covers are so important to selling books — especially YA books — I can’t help think about how and why they change when they go from their hardcover originals to their paperback incarnations. Here’s a bunch of recent and forthcoming cover changes. Some are good, some are bad, and some don’t elicit much from me at all in terms of being good or bad.

I’ll Be There by Holly Goldberg Sloan is getting a makeover. The original hardcover is on the left and the paperback (due out June 12) is on the right. I think both of these covers are pretty good — the original is illustrated, which is a rare thing to find in a YA cover, and it works well. I’ve read this book, and it’s a quieter novel, and the original cover fits the tone, without overshadowing or overselling the quiet nature of the story. One of the other things I like about this cover is that because it’s illustrated, rather than a stock photo, it will appeal to younger YA readers, and it’s a story that would be appropriate for those just starting in YA books. That’s not to say it’s a gentle or easy read, but rather, it’s inviting.

As much as I like the hardcover, I really like the paperback. It’s a photograph, but there’s something in the muted blue tone that works and makes it stand out. I like the sense of isolation and loneliness the pair of boots has, and it’s nicely contrasted with the monarch butterfly by not only the spot of color, but also the sense of hope it symbolizes. I’m also a fan of the font for the title and author.

Both of the covers for Ruta Sepetys’s Between Shades of Gray are quiet, muted, and almost too easy to look at, since the book is anything but easy to read. I find it interesting that neither of these covers screams historical fiction — they’re both very contemporary looking, and I can’t decide whether that’s a strength (wider readership) or a weakness (missing target readership). The original hardcover (left) is the one I prefer to the paperback for a number of reasons. First, and maybe most importantly, it’s not a photograph of a person. Because this story is so much about human nature, I think the fact it’s a faceless cover is important and a chilling contrast. Not to mention, the nature here fits the setting inside the book. I dig the font treatment on the title and author byline, though her name almost gets lost in the snow on the ground.

I’m not feeling the paperback cover because it features the face on it. Not just any face, but a very pale, very perfect face. More than that, though. there’s something about the way the snowflakes are caught in the girl’s eyelash that bothers me. What I do like about this treatment is the font for the title and the fact the author’s name is bigger and not fading into the image itself. In fact, I think the title font might be smaller than the author’s name even (though it’s a slight difference). It’s interesting that the paperback includes a tag line to it that the hard cover does not that reads “One girl’s voice breaks the silence of history.” I can’t say it’s the greatest or catchiest. For me, the hardcover wins this round.

Kimberly Marcus’s 2011 debut novel-in-verse Exposed does it so much better in hardcover, even though I find the hardcover pretty unmemorable itself. I’ve reviewed this book before and one of the elements running through the story is photography. So as much as I don’t care for the hard cover on the left, it fits the story pretty well, and it’s a nice play on the title. I do appreciate the title font on the hardcover, and how it is spaced out and, well, exposed.

The paperback cover is a downgrade, though. First, it’s a close up of a girl’s face, which tells absolutely nothing about the story. It’s nice it’s a close up of a girl with freckles, since there aren’t a lot of those, but that still tells nothing of the story. But worse: these covers of a close up of a girl’s face all look exactly the same. Maybe it’s helpful in a sense for reader’s advisory or it could be an interesting book display, but I tend to think it’s a little insulting to readers AND the the authors. It’s giving readers the same thing over and over and it’s making the author’s work blend into everything else that’s out there. With the paperback, there was a font change on the title and it’s probably my least-favorite font choice. It’s weak and looks cheap. And maybe the thing that’s most interesting about the change, though it certainly isn’t telling of much, is that the girl on the hardcover version has long, dark hair and the girl in the paperback has blond hair. I guess both girls do have their eyes shut.

Nomansland by Lesley Hauge came out in 2010 in hardcover, and it just released in paperback a couple of months ago, with a cover change. This is an interesting one to look at because both of the covers are really similar — they use the same color palette and both appear to have the same artistic technique of using a stock image and illustrating on top of it (to be fair, I’m not sure if that’s the case or if these are actual illustrations, but I believe it’s the first). In the hardcover on the left, we have the girl shooting her bow and arrow away from the reader. We’ve got no sense of what she’s thinking, though we can tell from her stance she’s strong and determined. The girl is in control of the situation, and it’s clear in the image that the horse is just a tool (and I like that). My one complaint in the girl is that she’s almost made a little too sexy with the way her clothes are sticking/fluttering on her body. That’s not to say she can’t be that way, but it almost feels a little over the top to me, given how much power there is in her stance and in her aim. Note, too, her hair is flying in her face.

In the paperback version, we have the girl facing the reader, and we can read intent in her eyes perfectly. We don’t have a body to judge, but we have a set of eyes and a gaze that gives the same feeling of determination and badassery that the first cover gives. It’s interesting this girl’s hair is flying out of her face, rather than in it, giving the reader an even stronger view of her expression. It’s sort of a refreshing change of pace from the covers with the windswept hair (especially where you know the girl is strong and powerful). I like the font treatment on the paperback cover and I appreciate how the red pops against the otherwise gray and toneless background. I don’t have a favorite between these two covers, but I do think they’re in an interesting conversation with one another.

The cover change on Susane Colasanti’s So Much Closer baffles me beyond words. The hardcover (left) nails the story perfectly. This is a book about a girl who decides she’s giving up her life in New Jersey to move to New York City in hopes of getting with a boy who just moved there himself. It’s very much a New York City novel — the hardcover captures it perfectly, and I think it does a great job of giving a sense of what kind of girl Brooke is. She’s wearing something that screams NYC to me, and seeing that her goal is to be an NYC kind of chick, well, this gets it. More than that, I appreciate the body language going on between the girl and the guy. There’s a hunt of something, the potential for romance to bloom, but there is not a  guarantee. If anything, it sort of illustrates the fact the girl is more interested than the guy (she is, after all, leaning into him and her leg is close to his). I like the font, and I like that the cover is consistent with other Colasanti covers in that her name is bigger and more prominent than the title. This isn’t a knock on the book, but rather, a smart move on the designer’s part, since Colasanti readers often read her books because they’re written by her. Titles are less important than the author.

The paperback cover gives a totally different impression of Brooke than the hardcover: in this instance, she is very much a girly girl. It’s not only because of her dress (which I think makes her look pregnant with the way it’s flying up in the front), but it’s through her entire body language — there’s the stance with her legs, and there’s the way her hair hangs, and maybe the thing standing out to me the most, which is her hands. This cover also plays up the romance much more than it plays up the NYC aspect. I can’t put my finger on what does this — maybe the font of the title and the way it’s laid out — but this cover looks much more like it’s targeting an adult readership than a teen readership. The paperback also features a tag line that reads “Follow your heart . . . No matter where it takes you,” and it fits the theme of the story. I don’t quite get the purpose in changing this cover, though it tells a much different story and gives the book a different slant than the hardcover does. But more importantly, and something I’ve been trying to figure out for a while now: who is holding up the umbrella? From the way her hand is positioned on the boy’s shoulder, there is no way the girl is holding it, unless she has Gumby arms, and from the guy’s position, the same deal holds. Isn’t his head being whacked on the inside by the way it’s positioned? Is there an invisible hand here? An invisible arm? Inquiring minds want to understand the physics behind this one.