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Put a Moon on It: The Moon on YA Book Covers

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Every year, we try to write about horror or scary books throughout October. While there are more posts planned, I thought I’d take the Halloween/October spirit of things into a little bit of a different direction. 

Let’s talk about the moon. More specifically, let’s talk about the moon as it appears on YA book covers. It’s interesting that the moon is a trend-y sort of image in cover design. I didn’t think it was until I started to look through YA books published by year. We’re in a moon upswing, after a handful of years where we didn’t see it on covers as much as we currently — and soon will — see it. When we did see it as a cover trend a few years back, it was a pretty solid indicator of a werewolf story. Now? Not so much. 

All of the books on this list feature a moon on the cover, even though not all of these books fall into the horror/scary/thriller categories. I think this could make for a fun display because the visual of it is great. I’ve noted places where the book is part of a series. 

Descriptions come from Goodreads, unless otherwise noted. If you can think of other YA books with moons on the cover, feel free to let me know in the comments. I stuck to covers where it was obvious the image was a moon, rather than something that could be the moon. 

Bright Before Sunrise by Tiffany Schmidt: Jonah and Brighton are about to have the most awkwardly awful night of their lives. For Jonah, every aspect of his new life reminds him of what he has had to give up. All he wants is to be left alone. Brighton is popular, pretty, and always there to help anyone, but has no idea of what she wants for herself.

Earth & Sky by Megan Crewe (October 28, first in a series): Seventeen-year-old Skylar has been haunted for as long as she can remember by fleeting yet powerful sensations that something is horribly wrong. But despite the panic attacks tormenting her, nothing ever happens, and Sky’s beginning to think she’s crazy. Then she meets a mysterious, otherworldly boy named Win and discovers the shocking truth her premonitions have tapped into: our world no longer belongs to us. For thousands of years, Earth has been at the mercy of alien scientists who care nothing for its inhabitants and are using us as the unwitting subjects of their time-manipulating experiments. Win belongs to a rebel faction seeking to put a stop to it, and he needs Skylar’s help–but with each shift in the past, the very fabric of reality is unraveling, and soon there may be no Earth left to save. (Description via Goodreads). 

The Dead & The Gone by Susan Beth Pfeffer (series, with ALL covers featuring a big old moon on them): After a meteor hits the moon and sets off a series of horrific climate changes, seventeen-year-old Alex Morales must take care of his sisters alone in the chaos of New York City.

My Best Everything by Sarah Tomp (March 2015): Luisa “Lulu” Mendez has just finished her final year of high school in a small Virginia town, determined to move on and leave her job at the local junkyard behind. So when her father loses her college tuition money, Lulu needs a new ticket out. Desperate for funds, she cooks up the (definitely illegal) plan to make and sell moonshine with her friends, Roni and Bucky. Quickly realizing they’re out of their depth, Lulu turns to Mason: a local boy who’s always seemed like a dead end. As Mason guides Lulu through the secret world of moonshine, it looks like her plan might actually work. But can she leave town before she loses everything – including her heart? (Description via Goodreads).

Starbreak by Phoebe North (second in series): After five hundred years, the Earth ship seventeen-year-old Terra and her companions were born and raised on arrives at Zehava, a dangerous, populated world where Terra must take the lead in establishing a new colony.

The Monstrumologist by Rick Yancey (first in series): In 1888, twelve-year-old Will Henry chronicles his apprenticeship with Dr. Warthrop, a New Escientist who hunts and studies real-life monsters, as they discover and attempt to destroy a pod of Anthropophagi.

A Creature of Moonlight by Rebecca Hahn: Marni, a young flower seller who has been living in exile, must choose between claiming her birthright as princess of a realm whose king wants her dead, and a life with the father she has never known–a wild dragon.

Bright Coin Moon by Kirsten Lopresti (November 18): Lindsey Allen, seventeen, aspires to be an astronomer but her eccentric mother decides they must move to Los Angeles to become psychics to the stars, and soon Lindsey must either betray her mother or her new mentor.

Dove Arising by Karen Bao (February 24, 2015): On a lunar colony, fifteen-year-old Phaet Theta does the unthinkable and joins the Militia when her mother is imprisoned by the Moon’s oppressive government. 

Defy The Dark edited by Saundra Mitchell: Seventeen original stories that take place in the absence of light.

Girl On A Wire by Gwenda Bond: A ballerina, twirling on a wire high above the crowd. Horses, prancing like salsa dancers. Trapeze artists, flying like somersaulting falcons. And magic crackling through the air. Welcome to the Cirque American! Sixteen-year-old Jules Maroni’s dream is to follow in her father’s footsteps as a high-wire walker. When her family is offered a prestigious role in the new Cirque American, it seems that Jules and the Amazing Maronis will finally get the spotlight they deserve. But the presence of the Flying Garcias may derail her plans. For decades, the two rival families have avoided each other as sworn enemies. Jules ignores the drama and focuses on the wire, skyrocketing to fame as the girl in a red tutu who dances across the wire at death-defying heights. But when she discovers a peacock feather—an infamous object of bad luck—planted on her costume, Jules nearly loses her footing. She has no choice but to seek help from the unlikeliest of people: Remy Garcia, son of the Garcia clan matriarch and the best trapeze artist in the Cirque. As more mysterious talismans believed to possess unlucky magic appear, Jules and Remy unite to find the culprit. And if they don’t figure out what’s going on soon, Jules may be the first Maroni to do the unthinkable: fall. (Description via Goodreads)

The Mad Scientist’s Daughter by Cassandra Rose Clarke Finn looks and acts human, though he has no desire to be. He was programmed to assist his owners, and performs his duties to perfection. A billion-dollar construct, his primary task now is to tutor Cat. As she grows into a beautiful young woman, Finn is her guardian, her constant companion– and more. But when the government grants rights to the ever-increasing robot population, however, Finn struggles to find his place in the world.

Fateful by Claudia Gray: When seventeen-year-old Tess Davies, a ladies’ maid, meets handsome Alec Marlow aboard the RMS Titanic, she quickly becomes entangled in the dark secrets of his past, but her growing love puts her in mortal peril even before fate steps in.

Nocturne by Christine Johnson (second in series): After the tragic events of the summer, Claire wants to worry about nothing but finding the perfect dress for the Autumn Ball, but her worst nightmares come true when someone learns that she is a werewolf, placing everyone she knows at risk.

Wolfsbane by Andrea Cremer (second in series): Alpha wolf Calla Tor forges an alliance with her masters’ enemies and tries to rescue her pack from imprisonment in Vail.

 
A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness: Thirteen-year-old Conor awakens one night to find a monster outside his bedroom window, but not the one from the recurring nightmare that began when his mother became ill–an ancient, wild creature that wants him to face truth and loss.
Mechanica by Betsy Cornwell (August 4, 2015): Nicolette’s awful stepsisters call her “Mechanica” to demean her, but the nickname fits: she learned to be an inventor at her mother’s knee. Her mom is gone now, though, and the Steps have pushed her into a life of dreary servitude. When she discovers a secret workshop in the cellar on her sixteenth birthday—and befriends Jules, a tiny magical metal horse—Nicolette starts to imagine a new life for herself. And the timing may be perfect: There’s a technological exposition and a royal ball on the horizon. Determined to invent her own happily-ever-after, Mechanica seeks to wow the prince and eager entrepreneurs alike. (Description via Goodreads). 
Liar’s Moon by Elizabeth C. Bunce (second in series): In a quest to prove her friend, Lord Durrel Decath, innocent of the murder of his wife, pickpocket Digger stumbles into a conspiracy with far-reaching consequences for the civil war raging in Lllyvraneth, while also finding herself falling in love.

Moonglass by Jessi Kirby: At age seven, Anna watched her mother walk into the surf and drown, but nine years later, when she moves with her father to the beach where her parents fell in love, she joins the cross-country team, makes new friends, and faces her guilt.

Written in the Stars by Aisha Saeed (March 24, 2015): Naila’s vacation to visit relatives in Pakistan turns into a nightmare when she discovers her parents want to force her to marry a man she’s never met. 

Hardcover to Paperback Makeovers: Backlist YA Covers To Consider

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We talk a lot about cover makeovers when it comes to new books, and recently, I talked about a slew of books that had their titles changed when they were rereleased. But after spending a little time with recent publisher catalogs, I noticed a pile of older YA titles — those which aren’t front list but have been out for quite a few years — being rereleased with new paperback editions. Some of these are for anniversary editions and some are being redone in conjunction with a new release by the same author, often as a way to garner attention for the older title for when readers get hooked on the new book.

Some of these redesigns are winners and some of them aren’t as great. While the designs tend to mimic trends going on in the moment, it’s always interesting to see which of the older designs managed to become somewhat iconic in reader minds and to conjecture whether the same can be said about the newer designs. If we’ve read a book in the past, do we tend to prefer that cover? Will a new cover bring new readers who haven’t otherwise discovered the book before? 
All descriptions are from WorldCat. As always, I’d love to hear what covers are speaking to you and which ones were better left in their older versions. All of these are single titles being repackaged, except for one, which is a trilogy. In some cases, this isn’t the book’s first redesign, so I’ve tried to grab the original hardcover and original paperback design. 

On the left is the original hardcover design for Gail Giles’s Shattering Glass and on the right is the original redesigned paperback. They maintain a lot of similar elements. It’s just the perspective and focus changes a bit. In the hardcover, the boy’s face is hard to make out behind the glass. In the paperback, the shattered glass is focused around his eye and the rest of his face can be made out. The design for the title and author name differ quite a bit, too.
Out January 6, 2015 is the new paperback design of Shattering Glass. This cover goes in an entirely new direction, and it’s a positive one. There’s no longer a face nor a pane of glass. Instead, we have broken glasses. It showcases the violence within the book, and the fact there’s blood on the cover is enough reason to pause. How often do we see that? How often do we see a book with such a violent cover written by a woman? This cover is reminiscent of Winger and that’s not a bad thing. 
My only issue with the new cover is that the alternate coloring for “Shattering” isn’t extremely clear. It took me a long time to pull out that the red says “Hate,” and maybe that’s because it’s an uneven spacing between the letters — I kept reading it as “Hatte,” rather than “Hate.” I almost think the impact would be greater if that weren’t how they chose to color the title. 

I always thought the cover for John C. Ford’s The Morgue and Me was pretty good. It tells you everything you need to know about the book: it’s a murder mystery. But the new paperback on the right, out February 19, 2015, is such a winner. It’s creepier than the original, but it’s creepier in a way that has tremendous appeal to fans of murder mysteries. Where I think the original cover is a little young, the redesign has more appeal to a wider range of readers. I’m a big fan of how creepy toe-tags are on book covers, and the redesign still managed to get the money into the image (you can see it just below the “E” in “Morgue.” The fact this is void of most color is what makes it most eye-catching, too, and it sets the tone for the book. 

Jandy Nelson has a new book out this month, and so it’s not really a surprise to see the cover of her first book getting a redesign. Above are the original hardcover design on the left and the original paperback redesign on the right. I’m not a particularly huge fan of either cover, though they both fit the tone of The Sky is Everywhere and both definitely give off the “literary YA” vibe. Both also do a pretty solid job of making clear this book is meant to have crossover appeal to teen and adult readers, perhaps more so in the hardcover edition than the paperback. I think it’s a little bit of a stronger, more iconic cover, as well. The paperback falls into the trend many paperbacks at the time had: a girl who is on the cover, and in this case, she’s lying down (asleep probably more than dead in this instance). 
Penguin’s catalog keeps trying to tell me that the newly redesigned paperback, as seen above, came out in 2011, but I know that’s not the case. You can see it as available for purchase on retail sites, too, though on Amazon, when you look at the back cover of the “view” feature, it shows the original paperback redesign image. And the kicker for knowing this isn’t an older redesign? It notes that Nelson is the author of I’ll Give You The Sun, meaning that this book is either just out or won’t be out until her sophomore title comes out. That also tells you why the redesign: they’re banking on I’ll Give You The Sun to be the reason people would want to pick up The Sky is Everywhere, which now looks a heck of a lot like the second book in terms of design. 
The new paperback look is neither here nor there for me. It’s pretty enough and clearly, it’s angled toward literary readers and being put in a position to capture crossover readership. While I think it’s also going for an iconic look to it, it looks too much like I’ll Give You The Sun to be really memorable for me. It’s nice, but it’s not particularly special. 
Polly Shulman’s Enthusiasm has been a staple selection for “clean reads”/younger YA but the cover hasn’t always done it a whole lot of favors. On the left is the original hardcover and on the right, the original paperback redesign, which didn’t change a whole lot from the original, except to superimpose the image atop a well-known Jane Austen cover. The hardcover always felt a little too enthusiastic to me in terms of color choices, though that’s toned down in the paperback. The jumping girl though, I’ve never quite understood. I do appreciate she’s not wearing heels and instead has gym shoes. She’s rebellious. Note the Stephenie Meyer blurb beneath the girl on the paperback — that was an especially big deal when the book published in 2007.

Like The Sky is Everywhere‘s new paperback, I can find no information about the new paperback for Enthusiasm. It appears to be available now. This cover is a refreshing change from the originals, though I am curious about the fact there’s now a boy in the foreground and the girl has been relegated to the mirror in the background. The design of the mirror, as well as the wallpaper, really do get at some of the classic influences of Austen that fit the novel. More interesting, the blurb for this book is no longer the one with Stephenie Meyer’s name attached. It’s been changed to a Time Magazine blurb — in many ways, that’s a smart change. Not because Meyer isn’t still important, but because Meyer’s influence on today’s teens, as opposed to the teens who may have been compelled to read this in 2007, 2008, 2009, is definitely different. This redesign is a winner. 

The original hardcover design for Chris Lynch’s Inexcusable was fairly risque when it came out 10 years ago. The bra on the cover! While it was certainly eye-catching, I do wonder how that design choice impacted the readership. Would boys pick up a book with a bra on the cover? I’m not entirely convinced. The paperback redesign of the book, on the right, easily has more appeal for a wider audience. There’s the football field under the lights. There’s the half a face of a girl, her mouth covered by the title, which in effect silences her. Laurie Halse Anderson’s blurb is a big boon on the cover, too: the design feels a little like Speak and that only further gives insight into what the book is about. The hardcover, on the other hand, is less effective to that point. 
On January 13, 2015, the tenth anniversary edition of Lynch’s Inexcusable will be published with another new cover. This one is exceptionally eye-catching and powerful. Design-wise, it’s great. But I don’t love it for this book. Although the title tells you that what happens isn’t excusable, the bed with the rumpled sheets almost makes this look too romantic. The tone feels off and at a disconnect with the title, and I think it might be a bit of a hard sell to teen readers (especially boys, for the same reason noted with the original hardcover). I think were this an adult novel, it would work much better than it does as a teen novel. I’m a much bigger fan of the original paperback look. 

Here’s what the first two books in Margaret Peterson Haddix’s “Palace of Lies” series look like. These are definitely on the younger end of the YA range, if not considered outright middle grade books. The covers remind me quite a bit of Meg Cabot, and that’s not a bad thing. I think there’s some good appeal for these titles with fans of Cabot’s The Princess Diaries.
There’s a third book coming to the series April 7, 2015 titled Palace of Lies, and with it, all of the books in the series are getting a redesign. They’ll all be available on the same day.

These are gorgeous, well-designed covers that will appeal to the same group of readers who loved the series initially. That’s not a bad thing. But what makes these covers even more special is that they are much more timeless than the originals, which look a bit dated design-wise because they used models on them, rather than illustrations. The colors are fresh and memorable. If I were buying books for my library collection, I’d order the entire redesigned set and retire the older covers. 

I can’t track down the exact timeline on the cover evolution of Let It Snow, the holiday short story anthology featuring John Green, Maureen Johnson, and Lauren Myracle, so here’s a look at the three cover designs it’s hard. All three have been pretty straightforward in what the book is about. These are holiday short stories. The book features three heavy hitters in YA. I don’t have a whole lot more to say about the designs since they all get right to it, and I think they’re all pretty good. They’re all the kind of images that work and will work for a long time.

But there’s a redesign coming September 30 of this year. And you know what this redesign does that none of the other covers did? It gets to the romance angle of these holiday short stories. It’s definitely a pretty cover, and clearly, there’s some love going on here. But to me, it’s less of a long-lasting cover image than any of the other three, and I wonder about the ages of those models (teenagers? I have a hard time buying that). I suspect part of why this book gets redesigned like it does is because it does feature such big names in YA, so the new looks get it to new readers who may not know about it in the same way they know about the authors’ other works. More, in this case, I suspect the fact that there’s a new anthology of holiday short stories written by New York Times Bestsellers and edited by Stephanie Perkins, out in early October, helped fuel the redesign (and focus on romance).

I remember when the redesign for E. Lockhart’s The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau Banks came out, the paperback was such a disappointment to me. I love the hardcover. It embodies the story so well, and it’s got something iconic to it. The paperback, on the other hand, features a girl who looks far too young to be Frankie. The entire design of it, including the school in the background and the way that the title is rendered on top of a piece of old, torn paper, feels mismatched. 
Recently — and, as far as I can tell, available now — there was another paperback redesign of Frankie. This one is better than the original paperback, but it’s still not as iconic as the original hardcover. I’m not entirely sure what’s going on here, though, and I’m not sure it tells me anything about the book nor about how feminist it is nor about how awesome Frankie is as a character. Sure, those things aren’t evident in the original hardcover, either, but this redesign looks like so many other books that I’m not sure it does anything special or new. In fact, Frankie, if that’s her on the left, is wearing pretty nice clothes and toting a nice purse for someone who is who she is in the story. Or maybe Frankie is the one on the right? If that’s the case, I can be into that a little more. 
But I want to know: what happened to the dog emblem? 

Hardcover to Paperback Redesigns: 7 To Consider

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Are you ready for another round of YA design changes? Here’s a look at seven books — eight, actually, since one is a series redesign — that will be getting new designs in their paperback incarnations. Some of these are great redesigns and others aren’t as great as the original looks.

Sick by Tom Leveen is getting a new look in paperback that doesn’t do it better nor worse than the original. This is a zombie apocalypse story, set in a high school. The original cover on the left gets at that pretty well. I love the fact it’s only black, red, and white. It’s stark, and at the same time, it’s a little bit funny (because this book is a little bit funny, even though it’s horror). The font for the title works, and I dig how the “C” is in a different font than the rest of the letters, and the three boys wielding weapons are centered within it, somewhat protected but somewhat vulnerable, since a “C” isn’t a closed letter. This cover skews on the younger end of YA for me, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and for younger teen readers who want a zombie story, I think this one is fine. This cover works.

The paperback, available August 26, takes the look in an entirely different direction and yet, it still contains a lot of the original elements. This cover is more stark but still has the red, black, and white as the only colors. Rather than feature the zombie hordes, it features a lone, disgusting zombie at the top. The zombie’s mouth is dripping blood right into the “I” of “Sick,” which is kind of a neat effect. But I wonder: why is the zombie wearing nail polish? That’s not blood; that’s polish. Would a once-alive, now-zombified person’s nail polish look that good? I have some doubts about that.

I appreciate that the cover kept the “C” the same as it was on the original image, with the boys in the middle. The tag line stayed exactly the same, though the paperback features a pull quote from one of the trade reviews: “Gore and action will leave enthralled readers thrilled.” I think that quote actually grounds the cover a bit, giving it — and the bloody letter — an older and edgier look than the paperback. What really separates the two covers, though, is that the original doesn’t give a huge indication this is a zombie story. It tells you something bad is going on, but the figures aren’t perfectly clear in terms of what they are; you could guess, but it’s not super obvious to the casual reader or browser. In the paperback copy, you know pretty well that the sick creatures are zombies.

Neither cover does it better for me. They’re built for different readerships: the first probably for those who’d want a lighter zombie romp and the second for those who are seeking a ZOMBIE STORY.

Leslie Stella’s Permanent Record is a book I talked about a little over a year ago when a few of us did a read along to Robert Cormier’s The Chocolate War, as it’s a great read alike. The original cover, though, would not tell you that, nor would it tell you anything, really, about the content of the story. Is it a book about tagging? Graffiti? About paper bombs? Explosions? Even the blurb on the cover indicates nothing: “A smart, funny, complex novel . . . Leslie Stella is a brilliant writer.” To the average browser, this means nothing. To even the more well-read, that blurb tells you nothing except it’s supposed to be a smart, funny, and complex book. But what is it?

While I think the cover doesn’t say anything, it’s still an attractive cover. I think it almost works in making someone pick it up because they’ll be compelled by the image to find out what it is about. It’s ultimately a story about fitting in and about bullying, and it’s contemporary realistic. The paper bomb on the cover fits with a part of the story, and the title, Permanent Record, is about Badi, the main character.

The paperback edition of Permanent Record, available August 14, is a slight improvement on the original in that it grounds the story a bit more with a genre. You know it’s going to be a realistic novel because it features the lower-half of a trio of real people. It looks like so many other realistic YA titles out there that use stock images of people. I’m not entirely sure, though, I understand this particular stock image. The kids look like they’re going camping, not attending school deep inside Chicago proper. What’s interesting, though, is it looks almost like the two boys in the picture are people of color — it’s interesting because that’s a rarity but, unfortunately, we don’t get to see their faces to know if they really are. And since this is a story about a person of color, it would have been awesome to see that head-on. The font for the title, as well as Stella’s name, are a marked improvement from the hardcover. It looks like the blurb is gone from the paperback, as well.

For me, the winner is the paperback in this round. It looks more polished and tells a little more about the book itself.

Maureen McGowan’s “The Dust Chronicles” series, which is a trilogy comprised of Deviants, Compliance, and Glory, got easily one of the best makeovers when the third book was published last month. Gone are the somewhat cheap, young images of the original look. They’ve been replaced with covers that look fancy and much more like a compelling dystopian world. I really don’t have a whole lot to comment on beyond saying that this is a marked improvement in cover design and it actually piques my curiosity in the series.

All of the redesigns of this one are available now.

Interestingly, this series, as well as Permanent Record, are titles published by Amazon’s YA imprint. Part of me wonders if when they began this publishing arm, they didn’t quite have a grasp on cover design. Because now that they’re a little deeper into the territory, they’re doing a better and better job (have you seen this great cover for Gwenda Bond’s forthcoming Girl on a Wire? It’s outstanding).

I read Bill Konigsberg’s Out of the Pocket way back when it came out in 2008. I loved this book then and it’s still one I think about all the time. It’s about a football player in southern California who also happens to be gay. No one knows that yet, except his best friend. But when his best friend doesn’t keep a lid on it, the story leaks and suddenly, he’s in the spotlight not just with his team, but with the whole country. It’s a well-done story about sexuality and football and what it means to be a gay football player when that’s far from an easy place to be because of what football is culturally.

The original cover for this one depicts that it’s a football story. It’s quite similar to another book that came out around the same time: Tim Tharp’s Knights of Hill Country. It’s not a bad cover by any means, and it speaks to those readers who like a good football book — and Konigsberg’s book fits that bill.

But I have so much love for this paperback cover. Released earlier this year through a different publisher than the hardcover, the paperback gets at not only the fact this is a book featuring sports and athletics, but it really nails that it’s a story about one boy who happens to be an athlete. He looks rugged and tough, but there’s something in his expression that also renders him a bit sensitive, like there’s something beneath that surface begging to be drawn out.

The paperback looks like the kind of cover that would speak to a much wider range of readers than the hardcover because it’s not limiting itself to readers who want a book about sports. It still says sports story to me, but that’s not all that it says. It’s a winner.

I used to ask my teen readers about book covers a lot as a means of finding out whether what I was thinking about covers and cover design was in line with what they were thinking. One particular cover I asked about a few years back was Siobhan Vivian’s Not That Kind of Girl. It was a cover my girls in particular disliked because it didn’t fit the story at all — to them, it said this was a romance, rather than a feminist novel about a girl who happens to experience a little romance in the story. The “just about to kiss” was a trend then, and Vivian’s cover looked quite a bit like the one on Sarah Mlynowski’s Ten Things We Did.

During a lock in one night, I had my girls redesign covers of books they read and they thought were misleading. Vivian’s was one they chose to redesign, and what’s most interesting to me now is how close their imagined design was to the newly repackaged cover of Not That Kind of Girl, coming out July 29. Rather than play up the romance, the new cover plays up the fact this is a story about a girl who doesn’t see herself like the other girls around her (and yes, that annoying aspect of “not that kind of girl” is purposeful and undermined in the story because this is a whip-smart feminist novel). This new cover captures that to a T, with one girl singled out among the ranks of her classmates who appear to be the same, even though they are the same only in clothing.

While I think the outfits may make the girls in the background look a little corporate and maybe a little beyond high school age, the girl at the center is one of the rare times I’ve seen a model on a YA cover that screams teen girl to me. Often, they look like 20-somethings, rather than teens. This girl, though? She’s a teenager.

I love, too, how this cover fits nicely with Vivian’s cover for The List. It’s a really strong repackaging and I hope when Vivian’s other two novels are recovered, they follow in this trend. It’s a good one.

The original print run for Katie Cotugno’s How to Love surprised me when I looked it up. It was much bigger than I thought. This is a book I’d heard about and have a review copy of (still) but it’s one that I saw few reviews of that compelled me to pick it up. I actually saw few reviews period, though I have been fascinated in the publication journey of this particular book, since it’s a partial Alloy product.

The design for the hardcover might have been one of the first font-driven, image-only covers to publish before the trend took full-hold of the YA world. It’s clean, but it’s not particularly unique nor compelling. It’s the kind of cover that tells you there’s romance — the title and the heart alone would do that — and it looks like the kind of cover with great crossover appeal to adult readers.

But maybe the font-driven, image design isn’t for all books, since this is going the opposite direction in its paperback makeover, due out next March. The paperback returns to the stock image, this time of a couple not just kissing but in full-out holding each other mode. I have to say I’m not really paying a lot of attention to the couple though (which, they don’t look like teenagers, do they?). I’m too distracted by that obnoxious wallpaper in the background of this cover. Where are they? Who made that wallpaper choice?

Does this girl have really long arms, too? The way her hand is able to reach around his neck and clasp onto her opposite shoulder makes me think she has the longest arms in the world. Or maybe that guy has the world’s smallest neck.

Neither of these covers really does it for me, though I think if I had to pick one, it’d be the original cover. The paperback, save the wallpaper, is really generic.

The last cover in this roundup worth talking about is the one for Vikki Wakefield’s Friday Never Leaving, a book that came out last year and not enough people talked about (I enjoyed it a lot and am sad more people have not picked it up).

This is an Australian import which got a new look in America in the hardcover on the left. It’s a girl underwater, but unlike a lot of books that have the girl underwater look going for them, that’s actually an important part of the story. But as it’s done on the cover here, I don’t know that it’s compelling, and I don’t think the very thin, very spread out font for the title helps much. The whiteness of the title fades out, and more, Wakefield’s name is very easy to miss since it’s so tiny. While I think the cover says it’s a literary novel — and it is — I don’t think the cover is particularly appealing. It’s understated to a point where it just fades into the shelves and every other book out there.

The paperback of Friday Never Leaving will be available September 9 and . . . it looks like a cover that missed the “girls laying in water” trend from a few years ago. It’s dated. But what’s worse is that it’s also really unattractive in its color palate. It looks dirty, rather than polished. The girl would actually melt into the water if it weren’t for her odd placement on the cover, just below the bottom of “Leaving.” The font here is still not great, as it’s too thin and too easily overlooked, and while Wakefield’s name got larger in the paperback, it’s still very easy to miss, as it fades into the image.

It looks generic and forgettable.

What’s interesting is that the original cover for Wakefield’s novel from Australia, as well as the UK edition, are so good:

These covers stand out, they’re fresh, and they’re relevant to the story itself. They’re much more eye-catching than what’s been created in the US. I can’t help but wonder if the bland designs have been part of why I haven’t seen more talk about this book — it’s easy to overlook and easy to write off.

Covers Through the Years: The Golden Compass

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Long-time readers of Stacked may remember our inaugural post where we discussed our favorite books. Easily occupying my top spot is The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman, which meant a great deal to me when I first read it as a young teen and still holds immense power over me today. It continues to be popular and highly-regarded among today’s readers and critics, meaning that its cover has gone through several incarnations since I first read it. I thought it might be interesting to review these various covers through time as Kelly has done for other books and authors previously. The His Dark Materials trilogy, beginning with The Golden Compass, is a curious case study for me, as a battle has raged since its publication over the “proper” age of its audience, ranging from middle grade to adult.

The book was first published as Northern Lights in the United Kingdom in 1995 by Scholastic. The US edition, retitled The Golden Compass, followed in 1996 from Alfred A. Knopf. For this post, I’ll focus mostly on the US covers throughout the years since then – the covers I’ve come across in my own reading and collecting. Otherwise, the scope would be too large for me to cover adequately, especially since the book has since been published in many more countries.

Here are the original US hardback covers of all three books in the trilogy. One of these things is not like the others. While the first two books were published very close to each other (1996 and 1997), the third wasn’t published until 2000, three years later (not a huge wait, but notable considering the small gap between the other two). This, including the tremendous acclaim for the first two novels, probably accounts for the design change for the third book, which is much more sophisticated and expensive to produce (if you can’t tell from the image, the gold portion is a cut-out).

I believe the series was always marketed to youth in the US, but the delineation between middle grade and young adult wasn’t as clear then (some would claim it’s not even clear now). It wasn’t unusual, at least to my recollection, to find covers featuring illustrated characters on novels aimed for teens in the mid-90s. These days, you usually find illustrated covers on middle grade novels, not YA novels. Our 2014 eyes would probably peg these books as middle grade, which is accurate – Amazon lists the suggested age as 10 and up, and the first two were in my middle school library (I assume the third made it in when it was published). The books are also meant for teens (and appeal to them), but most teens of today would probably pass these by as too juvenile.

These paperback versions were published in 1997, 1998, and 2001 by Del Rey. Again, the third book looks different. I couldn’t find an image of the third book that matches the first two more closely, so I’m assuming there isn’t one. These do look like they’re geared for a slightly older audience, but they’re still dated.

In 2001, Alfred A. Knopf gave us these lovely paperback editions of all three novels. With the images of the daemons and children in the background, I think they still demonstrate that they’re for teens (though perhaps older teens), but they look more modern and a bit more sophisticated. The gold foil portion in the center is raised and gives a deluxe feel to the covers. Also worth noting, this is the first time all three books completely match each other.

Yearling published a few more paperback editions in 2001 (the first two) and 2003 (the third). These are definitely geared for the younger end of the target audience (10-12). They actually remind me a little of the new Animorphs covers. I’m not a huge fan of them personally, but if it widens the audience, I’m for it. These are the paperbacks currently in print and the ones you’re prompted to purchase when you visit an online retailer such as Amazon or Barnes and Noble. They’re also the first editions with bonus content. Since these came out around the same time as the Knopf versions above, I think they’re interesting to compare – they’re each going for very different readers.

Laurel Leaf released these mass market versions in 2003. These are unrecognizable from adult mass market fantasy titles. I like the design; it’s above average for mass market books. The image doesn’t clearly show that the middle illustrations are actually cut-outs, showing through from the pages behind. It seems the publishers were going for as broad an audience as possible with these, if they weren’t marketing to adults specifically. I own these versions and I’m pretty sure I purchased them from the adult section of the bookstore.

In 2006 (and 2007), we get the deluxe tenth anniversary editions from Knopf. They’re lovely and very appealing for adults. These are covers to attract established fans and collectors. They also have a tremendous amount of new material, including new illustrations, spot art from Pullman, and a lot of “archival” documents from the characters’ lives. They’re hardback with a deckle edge and a ribbon bookmark. Note that the same background images have been used in three editions so far (paperbacks of 2001, mass markets of 2003, and these).

These deluxe editions are no longer in print – I couldn’t find them to purchase from any usual retailer. If you want a hardback edition of any book in the series, you’re pretty much out of luck unless you want to buy used or from a re-seller. The only editions (of any format) currently in print that I could find were the Yearling paperbacks from 2001/2003. I don’t own those, but they appear to be mass market rather than full-size trade versions. (I’m able to purchase the original 1996 hardcover from Ingram, but they have limited quantities and I suspect the books are leftovers from many years ago.)

A US omnibus edition was published in 2007 by Knopf prior to the release of the Golden Compass film adaptation (which isn’t a good adaptation, but I like it anyway). It’s….a little retro, in my opinion. This is as close as I could find to a US movie tie-in edition, which I don’t normally care for anyway. I do like the cover’s colors, which are reminiscent of the aurora borealis, an important part of the plot.

Selected UK Editions

Here we get a true movie tie-in edition, though it’s from Scholastic UK. It looks a bit like a movie poster, which I suppose is the point. The second image above is a 2011 omnibus edition from Everyman’s Library, another UK publisher. It’s so different from anything else, which is part of why I like it. I think that’s supposed to be Iorek on the cover, but it looks more like a wolf than a bear, so I’m not sure.

The first picture above is specifically called an “adult edition.” It’s from Scholastic Press (UK), published in 2001. I think it’s pretty terrible. I’m not really sure what they were going for. None of the imagery seems relevant to the story at all. It seems like it might be a historical painting, but I wouldn’t be able to place it. (Anyone have any ideas?) I’m not a fan, but I do find it interesting that an adult version, marketed as such, exists, especially since there are plenty of other versions out there that don’t scream “I’m reading a kids’ book!”

The second cover is a Scholastic (UK) paperback from 2011. I think it’s lovely and all ages friendly in its appeal. When I visited London last year, I picked up a copy of this version.

These are images from a special Scholastic (UK) edition published in 2008. I own this one, which comes in a lovely blue and silver box (shiny!) and looks even more deluxe than the US special edition.

Selected International Editions

Most of the international versions actually use a lot of the same imagery as the UK and US versions. The image of the alethiometer reflected in the above covers is the one used by the initial paperback UK version. The background and typefaces are different, but the basic design is the same. The first cover is Greek and the second is Persian. You’ll find many other international covers that look very similar to these.

Here are two very different international versions. The first is the Danish cover, which takes the title literally and puts an actual compass on it. The second is the Spanish cover, which takes the common image of Lyra on Iorek, but draws it in a different style.

These are the Slovak and Italian versions, both nice in their own way, though I really like the Italian cover (it might have something to do with the language as well). I think it’s also interesting to consider which countries opted to translate the original UK title (Northern Lights) and which ones chose to translate the US title (The Golden Compass).

Hardcover to Paperback: 5 YA Changes to Consider

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Another season of catalogs means another round of YA books getting new looks in their paperback editions. Some of these cover changes are good ones, while other ones seem to miss the mark. In addition to the four books I’m rounded up to talk about, I thought it would be fun to also include a book that got not one, not two, but three different cover designs before it even got published (and it’s not publishing until this summer, so it may even see another one).

As always, I’d love your thoughts on any of the changes, and I’d love to see if you’ve found any recent changes worth nothing. Original hardcover designs are on the left, with their paperback redesigns on the right.

The recovering of Lauren DeStefano’s Perfect Ruit is not only one I’m behind, but I think the paperback edition might be one of my favorite covers in a long, long time. The hardcover isn’t bad, but it’s pretty similar to a lot of other covers in YA right now. It’s a girl in a dress, and the design around here looks sort of steampunk, even though it’s a utopian novel. The font for the title isn’t my favorite; the “Perfect” lettering is too boxy and stiff, and that’s carried over into the author’s name, too. While I don’t mind the way “Ruin” looks, I don’t like how the bottom of part of the “R” is cut off for the line running from the bottom of “N” and down around the edge of the cover and back.

If you look closer at the original cover, there’s a lot going on. There’s a couple of dangling keys, a firefly, constellations in the background, and what look like small ornaments hanging in the tree branches above the girl’s head. They’re a little obscured for me because my eye is drawn right to the center of the cover, to the bright red “Ruin” and red dress the girl is wearing. I suspect those small elements play a role in the story, but it’s very easy to overlook them.

The paperback for Perfect Ruin though — it’s eye-catching in its minimalism. The all-black background with a crisp, white bird statue being shattered is immediate and it’s immediately captivating. The smaller-than-expected title done in all white, along with the smaller-than-expected author name is understated to a great effect. While the cover doesn’t tell a whole lot about the story, it’s engaging and piques my curiosity. I know there’s a story here, and I want to know why what looks like perfection in the form of that ceramic bird has been shattered. This is an excellent redesign, and the companion book, Burning Kingdoms, is getting a similarly striking design.

Perfect Ruin will be available in paperback March 2015.

I read Julie Berry’s All The Truth That’s in Me last year and felt pretty middle-of-the-road about it. Great writing, but the story itself didn’t necessarily work for me, and I found the ambiguous time period setting to be more irritating than creative. That translated to how I felt about the cover, too. The girl on the cover has a very modern look to her in terms of how she’s wearing her hair and her makeup (the dark eyes especially). She didn’t match up with the image of the main character I had in the least. More, though, the girl on the cover is wearing an ambiguous shirt that could either translate into something that members of a cult might wear — that’s fitting, maybe, with the story — or as an outfit worn during a specific historical period of time, which would contradict the very modern style of the girl’s makeup and hair. The cover doesn’t tell readers more about the story than the story does, and in this case, some of the questions I had and other readers had (via reviews) aren’t cleared up.

What does work on the cover is the tear across the girl’s mouth. That’s a huge part of the story, and I think the design nails it. This is a book that digs into what it means to be silenced and what it means when your capacity to speak up is taken from you, and I think it’s conveyed here.

In paperback, the book has an entirely different look and feel to it. The girl is gone, replaced instead by a flower. There’s one petal that isn’t “pretty” like the rest of them, as it looks like it’s infected. Gone is the blurb on this cover, replaced with a tag line that’s more interesting: “Her words could ruin him, but her silence will destroy them both.” While I think the tag line does tell the story, I think it’s a little too “sexy” for what the story actually is about.  I’m not a huge fan of the gold font, nor the gold coloring of the flower, as I think it might be trying to convey that ambiguous time period setting again.

Maybe most interesting to me is that the paperback looks like it’s appealing to an entirely different readership than the hardcover is. The hardcover looks like many other YA titles (big face of a girl style), whereas the paperback looks much more literary and like the kind of book you’d find in the adult section of a bookstore or library. I suspect without the girl, it might better reach adult readers, who will be curious what the story could be about since the cover doesn’t tell you a whole lot. This is a good cover — better than the hardcover, I think — but it’s not necessarily one that gives a whole lot of insight into the story. In this case, that might be a positive thing, as it’s also not further complicating some of the story’s unanswered questions.

The paperback edition of Berry’s All The Truth That’s in Me will be available August 14, 2014.

I’m not sure what to make of the redesign of Lauren Kate’s Teardrop. The hardcover for this one is pretty standard, popular YA cover design. It’s not bad, but it’s not necessarily the most memorable or striking. The thing is: it works. The readers who are fans of Kate’s work will know this is the book for them and be drawn to it.

The paperback redesign, though, is even less memorable. It’s a giant face, with a closeup of a blue eye, and the title of the book is made so huge to take away from the image behind it. The new design adds a tag line that isn’t on the hardcover — “One tear can end the world” — which doesn’t really tell readers a whole lot, either. The author’s name is in a crisper font, but beyond that, I’m not sure this cover is any better than the hardcover. In fact, I would say that the hardcover in this case does better at speaking to teen readers who love these kinds of books. The paperback doesn’t even offer a pretty dress (one that’s disappearing!) to enjoy.

Teardrop will be available in paperback October 28, 2014. The hardcover of book two in the series, Waterfall, will be available the same day and carry the same design to it: a big face with a big title.

I think books that are published at the very end of the year can be easily missed. Part of it is that it’s just a busy time of the year, and part of it — at least in library and school land — is budget cycle. If you’re in a library that requires trade reviews for books, and your budget needs to be spent before the end of the year, it’s easy to not know about the December books unless there’s huge marketing behind them.

Audrey Couloumbis’s Not Exactly A Love Story came out in December 2012 and . . . I didn’t even know this book existed until I was doing some catalog browsing for cover changes to write about. Reading the description and looking at the original cover, it’s not clear this is a historical novel in the least (it’s set in 1977). The title doesn’t tell a whole lot about it either, except that it’s not your typical love story, despite the fact the image on the cover is of a couple partaking in what could be called a typical love story embrace. The color choices in the cover and the use of non-standard shapes to highlight some of the words in the title are jarring. This isn’t your standard YA cover, but it’s also not the most appealing one. Perhaps that’s because it doesn’t look like every other cover. I would see a good argument that this design dates the cover in a way that might be telling of the story’s setting. 

When I saw the paperback edition of the book, my first thought was that it was going for the Eleanor & Park look and low and behold, the description for this book in Edelweiss said this: “This quirky, flirty, and smart story will appeal to fans of Frank Portman’s King Dork, John Green’s An Abundance of Katherines, and Rainbow Rowell’s Eleanor and Park.” They know exactly what audience they want to target with this new look, and I think they nail it. As I’ve talked about before, there’s no question that the new trend is to compare everything to Green and Rowell and that cover designs are increasingly trying to mimic the illustrated covers of Rowell’s books. 

 I quite like the new look, and I dig how the houses sort of look like faces that are close to one another (this is maybe more obvious with the house on the left than the one on the right). I like the use of the landlines in the lit-up rooms of both homes, and I think the font that was used for the title gives a sweetness that is missing in the original cover. Interestingly, I think that the redesigned cover appeals to a much younger audience than the original cover does. Perhaps because of how it’s designed, how the focus is less on the paper or the love story, and how the font selection and starry sky just look like many a middle grade novel. 

Not Exactly A Love Story will be available in paperback July 22. 

The final cover redesigns I wanted to talk about are for a book not even out yet: Miranda Kenneally’s Breathe, Annie, Breathe. The cover on the far left was the first iteration, and it mirrored the trend of illustrated designs. It was interesting to watch the feedback that came from readers on this cover. While it wasn’t disliked, it didn’t match the other books Kenneally had written. Though this new book is set in the same world as Kenneally’s others, the books aren’t sequels. They don’t need to look alike, but many readers wanted them to maintain a similar look and I agree — at least when it comes to reader’s advisory and when it comes to getting books into the hands of teens, having that similar look helps a lot. This is especially true when you’re time-strapped or can’t read all of the books out there (who can?). The cover here isn’t bad, but it’s unexpected and contrasts with the look and feel of Kenneally’s other books. Note the tag line: “The finish line is only the beginning.”

The cover in the middle was the second iteration, and it looked much more like the rest of the books set in this world than the first cover. We know this is going to be a novel about an athletic girl. It’s not necessarily the most memorable, but it fits both the story description and the world in which the story is set. Not the tagline: “Sometimes letting go is the only way to hold on.” That’s quite different than the initial tag line.

Just days after the second cover was revealed, a third redesign came up for the book. This one might be the best one, though: it not only fits the rest of the books set in this world, but it’s striking and memorable in a way that the second one wasn’t. It’s clear the girl is an athlete here, but what’s most notable in the design is the large use of a blue background. It’s bright and will stand out on shelves the way that the girl running into the distant sunset wouldn’t. The design went back to the font used in the initial cover design, too, and to good effect. Perhaps this cover is the marriage of the illustrated cover — the clouds on the blue background — with the stock image cover — the girl on the ground, post-run. Tag line: “The finish line is only the beginning . . .”. The tag line works well with this cover, and I kind of like that there’s an ellipsis to round it out.

Breathe, Annie, Breathe will be available July 14, and worth noting: this is a hardcover release, whereas Kenneally’s prior releases were paperback originals. Perhaps that was part of the initial decision-making in changing the cover look so drastically? Whatever the reason, I think the final compromise is the strongest.