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YA Reissue Cover Makeovers — Updating for New Readerships

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Reissues of older YA works — those that have gone out of print, as well as those still in print but dated — aren’t a new concept. But as YA continues to grow and authors who were publishing before things heated up find themselves becoming more well-known, more older titles are seeing their covers getting facelifts. Sometimes, the reissue/redesigns come at a key anniversary for the book, as a means of introducing it to new audiences, and other times, these can come when a related book to a series appears, and the new look is meant to revive interest in it.

These reissues and redesigns typically fit newer trends in design and appeal to today’s market. Unlike mid-series redesigns, where the second book in a trilogy gets a new look and that new look carries throughout the rest of the series, these books are titles that have been out already but are getting entirely new looks through and through. An example of reissue and redesigned books you might be familiar with are the reworked Ellen Hopkins books, which maintain a lot of elements of the initial book covers, but they also appear new and fresh.

I find knowing about redesigns is helpful and worthwhile because it can help me make a decision when I’m weeding and updating the YA collection at work; if I know something is being redesigned and will have a wider appeal than the books I have, I might choose to weed and replace. Likewise, it’s helpful when I’m missing book two in a trilogy, as I might then choose to weed them all and replace with the updated look. It seems like 2014 is a big year for these reissue redesigns, so I thought it’d be interesting to round up a bunch of ones I’ve noticed recently and talk about whether they hit the mark or miss it.

Did you know this year marks the 40th anniversary of Robert Cormier’s The Chocolate War? You might remember last year’s read along, and one of the things I talked about was the evolution of the book’s cover. I think the reissue for the 40th anniversary on the right is excellent. It captures the mood and spirit of the book and doesn’t date it in the least. I love the font treatment for the title especially. The reissued cover will be out in late spring this year.

Though I think that Philip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” series might be more middle grade than YA, I wanted to include this series in my post because the redesign it’s getting this spring ages it up a bit. The original covers above are illustrated and look quite juvenile. While they look appropriate for the readership, they also look dated. They look like books from the late 1990s (and early 2000s).

This isn’t the first redesign for the series, but another one done to keep it fresh and of interest to readers. But this one certainly looks current and maybe helps age up the series too. The lack of illustrations and focus instead on an iconic image helps that. These covers will hit shelves in April.

Did you know that Lauren Myracle’s ttyl turns ten years old this year? It doesn’t seem like they came out that long ago, but they did. The above are the original covers, and this year, in honor of the tenth anniversary, they’re being reissued with new covers. And I think the new covers are excellent.

The covers are nearly identical to the originals — right down to the color — but they’ve been updated to look more clean and modern. The emoticons are in today’s style, and the font used for the titles is much more in line with today’s design trends. The biggest change is that Myracle’s name is much larger, but it makes sense: she’s really become a well-known name in YA since these books came out. Perhaps due in part to these very books.

The original coves of Garth Nix’s Abhorsen series are above. They’ve changed a little bit over the years, though these are the covers which stick out in my mind whenever I think about them — the series came out when I was in high school.

In June, these are the covers the series will be getting. They’re not bad, but they remind me a lot of the “iconic” covers of Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games series. It’s a smart move since the covers might be more timeless and they certainly fit a trend going on right now, though they might also blend in because of that. I do think it’d introduce the series to new readers since they look fresher than the originals.

If you remember these covers for Ann Brashares’s Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series, you’re probably of a certain generation. They’re illustrated with nary a real girl on them.

A few years ago, they got a facelift to include actual girls with pants that look like this:

These redesigns looked like a lot of other contemporary books featuring female main characters of the time. They also looked a lot older than the original covers, which I think was — and is — on trend with how a lot of YA books are designed.

This series is getting another new look this April, as the paperbacks are being relaunched in anticipation of Brashares’s new YA book.

The redesigns are certainly in line with current cover trends: we have a font-driven design. Aside from the bright colored font, though, I think the new covers are really boring. They’re minimalist, which I tend to like, but I think they blend too much into the landscape. There’s nothing that makes them stand out (that could be said about the second set of covers I linked to, too, which I think still are appealing to teen readers). Is it me or is there some weird photoshopping going on in the third cover with the butt of that girl’s jeans?

What’s most interesting to me is that the author is introduced as the author of The Here and Now. She’s no longer called the New York Times Bestselling author of this very series (as she was in the first set of covers).

The last series of redesigning come from Tom and Laura McNeal. Tom McNeal, as you may or may not know, wrote Far, Far Away last year, which garnered quite a bit of attention. I like the way they’re going to recover and reissue his and Laura’s backlists. The new looks are much fresher and appealing to today’s readers — older covers are on the left with the new covers on the right.

I especially like the new look to Zipped — it has an entirely different vibe and I want to pick it up.

The reissued covers will be available June 10.

These aren’t the only redesigned/reissued covers we’ll be seeing in the new year. Keep an eye out for even more of Judy Blume’s books to be redesigned (the first two have been revealed already over here) and Maggie Stiefvater’s Shiver series is getting a bit of a facelift (it’s primarily in color saturation, and you can see those redesigns here).

If you’re a fan of the Anne of Green Gables series, you might already know that Sourcebooks will be reissuing those, as well. It’s worth checking out the covers they’re using, too, which you can see the first two covers of here.

Any of these stand out to you as winners? Any you think were better in their original looks? I’d love to know, too, if you know of other reissues coming out this year.

Links of Note: January 11, 2014

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Trong G. Nguyen’s library art project. Check out the rest of the library-loving artists in this roundup over at the Library as Incubator Project site.

It’s been a few weeks since the last link roundup, but there’s been quite a bit of good stuff to share from the book world:

  • Over at Cite Something, Amanda MacGregor has rounded up a number of posts that are older readers (those who aren’t teens, that is) talking about favorite books they read when they were teenagers. Check out the first post, then go forward and read the ones that came up this week, too. 
  • Daniel Kraus wrote about his favorite YA and Middle Grade covers from 2013. I agree with a number of these, and I plan on talking about the paperback redesign of The Symptoms of My Insanity which I was definitely not a fan of. Also, I really want to know what the female equivalent of Winger‘s cover is. 
  • At School Library Journal, Shelley Diaz rounds up the 2014 kid lit being adapted into film or television.  Not listed on here because technically it’s not YA but a book with YA appeal is the film I’m really looking forward to: the adaptation of Jane Mendelsohn’s Innocence. I loved that book as a teen, though admittedly, I’m afraid to reread it and discover I dislike it now. 
  • Is book banning on the rise in school and public libraries? Interesting question and thoughts about this topic at the LA Times. 
  • This post by Peter Damien about the decline and fall of the Great Book Reviewer, a response to the New York Times OpEd about how reading is dying, is so wonderful. Go read it. 
Elsewhere:

One Old, One New, and One Coming Soon: Three Recent Contemporary Realistic YA Reads

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Since I’ve finished my committee reads, I’ve had time to finally read for me. I could write lengthy reviews on each of these, but sometimes that feels like more pressure than enjoyment. And my idea of short is longer than most people’s anyway. In this set of reviews, I’ve got a book coming out today, a book that’s been out for a few years, and a book that’ll be out next month. They’re very different in topic, but all are contemporary/realistic YA.

The Impossible Knife of Memory by Laurie Halse Anderson (out this week)

Like you’d expect of Anderson’s work, this is well-written, compelling, and tackles the issue of the impact of PTSD not only on the sufferer — who happens to be the father character — but also on those who are related to or have a relationship to the sufferer. This is emotionally-gripping, and I thought that Anderson really knocked it out of the park with Hayley’s snarky yet pained voice at the beginning of the book. That voice made the book for me, and it gave a real sense of the anguish she felt as her father’s primary caregiver. But when Hayley met Finn and began a relationship with him, her edge dulled significantly. In many ways, this makes perfect sense: she finally has someone she can talk to, relate to, and having that romance is an anchor for her. I found myself less invested in Hayley and more invested in her father’s well-being when it seemed like her voice shrunk.

Some of the plot points in the story were a little underexplained for me, as well. I needed to know more about the step-mother/not-a-step-mother who had been part of the reason Hayley and her father chose a life on the road in the first place. Was she an enemy? Was she to be trusted? Because by the end of the story, Hayley herself wasn’t entirely sure, but she was almost too willing to trust. Given the anger which Hayley had described their relationship, it seemed too easy and convenient, and I think part of that goes back to Hayley’s voice being tamped down.

The biggest let down, though, was the ending. It wrapped up far too quickly, far too easily, and the pacing in the final 15 pages of the book was way off. While the story itself spanned a few months at the beginning of the school year, once the Big Event happened at the end of the story (one that ultimately changes Hayley and her father’s relationship and both of their relationships with his PTSD), nearly a year blows by in just a few pages.

The Impossible Knife of Memory has a lot of tragedy in it, and at times, it felt a little bit too much. Hayley also abandons her best friend when she’s in need — her parents are going through a big divorce — and she does so not to help her father, but in favor of strengthening her relationship with Finn. It felt a little bit out of character for her, and given how much time speeds by in those last pages, I never got to know what happened with that plot thread nor if their relationship ever came back together. That said, it’s Laurie Halse Anderson, and it’s a solid contemporary YA novel. Readers who love her will pick this up and enjoy it, despite the weaknesses. Those who are new to Anderson, though, may want to start somewhere else. This is a nice addition to stories of PTSD, and interesting to me is that it publishes at the same time as Lucy Christopher’s The Killing Woods, which also tackles a father’s PTSD on his daughter. They’re nice companions to one another.

Making the Run by Heather Henson

I decided to pick this one up after reading through this list of YA recs and realizing I’d never even heard of it. It’s been out for a little over ten years, but topically, it’s as relevant as ever.

Lu’s mother died too young, and she’s been grieving that loss for a long time. It’s the end of her senior year and she cannot wait to leave her small town of Rainey, Kentucky, but when her older brother’s best friend Jay returns to town after his own leaving-after-high-school trip, Lu begins to fall for him. Add to that a best friend whose life is changed dramatically by one bad decision and then changed even further by an accident, Lu wonders if she’s destined to ever get out of Rainey or not.

Henson created a really angry girl in this story, and I thought that anger came through brilliantly. Jay says to her at one point that she either needs to use her anger or her anger will use her, and I felt that summed up the trajectory of Lu’s journey. The setting was palpable, and I appreciated that Henson allowed Lu to have hopes and dreams of getting out of Rainey that weren’t dependent upon her getting a scholarship and going to college. Lu’s only an okay student, and she doesn’t want to do that. She puts her passion into her photography, and while she doesn’t know if there’s a future in it, she’d rather spend time in her basement studio than hitting the books. It was refreshing to read a story where “the future” and “getting out” weren’t bound up entirely in the idea of college.

I didn’t feel like the rest of the characters were fleshed out quite enough, though. I never found what made Jay attractive, and while I felt bad for what happened to Lu’s best friend, I found all of the ancillary characters to be merely filler. None of them felt like they had lives of their own but were instead names. In context, it made sense since that’s all they were to Lu, but it made for a bit of a drag on the story.

This felt very real to me, in a way that I think a lot of current stories about middle class or lower middle class teens don’t. There’s not always a golden ticket out. Kids who want out have to consciously choose to do that sometimes, and I felt Lu’s struggles at the end about whether she could do it or not do it were authentic. I’d pass this book off to teens who love photography, who might not be the kinds of kids who are university-bound but still have dreams and aspirations, and it’s definitely the kind of story teens who live in similar towns and want nothing more than to get out will completely get.  I could see readers who dig gritty stories in the vein of Gail Gailes, Heidi Ayarbe, or maybe even Ellen Hopkins. It’s older, but it is definitely not dated.


Faking Normal by Courtney Stevens (available February 25)

The reviews are likening this to Anderson’s Speak or to Sarah Dessen, but I had a lot of issues with this tackling of rape What could have been a powerfully rendered story about secrets, lies, and the long-term effects of being a rape victim were instead marred by the fact this book was much more a whodunit than it was a fully-fleshed, rich, pained account of the after effects of what Alexi went through. Readers are lead astray more than once on who the criminal was here, and it was unnecessary because it removed the power and immediacy of what happened to Alexi away from her. Readers instead wonder if it was this football player, that football player, or someone else entirely. Alexi knows fully who it was, so this isn’t about her figuring it out.

More than that, it became far too obsessed with Kool Aid boy and Captain Lyric (who are the same person, which is a spoiler but not a spoiler than anyone who reads a few pages wouldn’t guess), and the story ends up allowing Alexi’s new romantic interest to steal her story of survival. He even takes the opportunity to tell her best friend what happened, despite the fact Alexi herself hadn’t felt comfortable doing so.

The story is set in the south, and it reads with that very southern feel in terms of some of what the characters say and how they act. There’s nothing wrong with it, and it in fact enriches a lot of the story and characters. I forgave some of the weirdness the teens had around Kool Aid boy, who liked to dye his hair with Kool Aid, as simply something that teens where they lived did. Perhaps it was weird to them a boy would want to color his hair in weird ways (I grew up in the Chicago suburbs and teens did it every day so it was never noteworthy — perhaps here it was).

However, there are a lot of awkward turns of phrase, and there are entire passages that needed some tighter editing. Again, I think a lot of this happened because this book didn’t know what it wanted to be. Was it meant to be an exploration of the way a survivor survives? If that’s the case, I never got to know what it was Alexi was really thinking or feeling. There was a lot of talking around how things were or talking through how things were, rather than talking about the things themselves. For example, Alexi took out her pain by scratching the back of her neck, but as readers, we’re never privy to how that felt or the things Alexi experienced prior to doing it or in the moments while it happened. She simply told us she did it and she worried about having blood found somewhere or being discovered with her hair pulled up. There’s not an immediacy to it.

What bothered me was that Alexi didn’t get her own story here — it kept being moved or displaced or handed over to someone else. And when she did get her own story, it didn’t always make sense. The first football player she went on a date with also tried to assault her and she left the situation very angry about it. After accepting an apology, she then later thought that he was Captain Lyric and then changed her mind about his intentions all along. I had a hard time suspending disbelief about the relationship dynamics between Alexi’s sister and fiance, especially at the end of the story. Moreover, I thought that when the reveal happened and we learn the identity of Alexi’s rapist. I had an even harder time buying that the criminal had never done anything in the prior ten years that would have roused suspicions where they should have been roused. It’s not that Alexi is being blamed here — far from it. It’s simply a matter of actual statistics.

I wanted more from this book and I needed less, too. Faking Normal had some charm to it, and I thought that Kool Aid boy was pretty interesting. His backstory was compelling, despite the fact I thought it was convenient how he and Alexi ended up spending so much time together. I thought Alexi herself really was pained and that what happened to her hurt her not only on a personal level but it hurt her because of the implications it would have for other people. She cared deeply about other people in a way that I think many readers will relate to — you can’t always stand up for yourself when you worry about the repercussions for other people not directly involved with something.

This is a worthwhile book because of what it tackles, but it’s not the best in the field. I think the comparisons to Anderson and Dessen are a little heady, and part of me wonders if those comparisons are based because of topic more than the actual exploration of story or the writing itself.

Review copies of The Impossible Knife of Memory and Faking Normal from the publisher. I purchased my copy of Making the Run. 

Classics: Those I Love & Those I Love to Hate

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We don’t talk much about adult classics here at Stacked, but I’m always interested by readers’ reactions to them. When I’m struggling to find common reading ground with other adults, asking them their opinion on Austen or Faulkner will often elicit some interesting discussion. As an English major in college, I read my fair share of the classics; I’ve only recently embraced the fact that I’m free to despise many of them (and I do).

This post is dedicated to sharing my antipathy. (I’ll include a hefty dose of classics I did like for some balance.) I apologize in advance if I excoriate your favorite. Feel free to tell me how wrong I am in the comments.

Absalom, Absalom by William Faulkner
Really, I could list the entire Faulkner canon here, but let’s not be greedy. I don’t take exception to the content or plot. Instead, it’s Faulkner’s style I dislike so much. Paragraphs and punctuation are two of writing’s greatest inventions. Completely eschewing them isn’t an effective stylistic choice, it’s a mess.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald 
It’s amazing how such a short book can manage to be so dull. I could never bring myself to care about Gatsby, much less be interested in any aspect of his life.


A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
This is a strange one for me to dislike, since the plot is actually pretty interesting and quite moving. Dickens’ style is just not my cup of tea.

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
I don’t hate this one as actively as the others, but it’s pretty high on the list. Peopled with an astonishing number of characters I just want to strangle, I found it neither romantic (which is fine – it’s not necessary supposed to be) nor compelling. I did find it bloated and tedious, though.

And now for a change of pace, a few classics I really love:

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Perhaps this is an obvious one, but I love this book. My love for it didn’t crystallize until I re-read it in a college class and we talked at length about the “Reader, I married him” line. I love its exciting plot, how Jane grows to love such an imperfect – and arguably not very good – man, and most of all, how she comes into her own as an individual.

The Color Purple by Alice Walker
I’ve never before or since read a book as simultaneously horrible and hopeful as this one. 

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Reading this one as an established SFF fan was really illuminating – I loved seeing how Shelley used the tropes I had always taken for granted. The fact that she wrote it at age 18 was inspiring, too.

Which classics do you love/hate?

Allegiant by Veronica Roth: A Spoiler-Filled Review & Discussion

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I know you’ve all been dying to hear my thoughts about Allegiant (approximately a month after everyone else has already moved on). I aim to please.

I normally don’t reveal anything too spoilery in my reviews, but this is the kind of book where I’d like to discuss the Big Things that happen, and spoilers are necessary. I’m also going to assume that a great many of you have read this one already.

Overall, I liked it. I didn’t love it, which is in keeping with my feelings about the series as a whole. Generally, the third and concluding volume of a dystopian trilogy is the one chock full of the most secrets, usually huge ones about the very nature of the society’s existence. Allegiant falls very neatly in line with this trend – the revelation about the Genetically Pure (divergent) versus Genetically Damaged (non-divergent) was the sort of thing I expected. It wasn’t earth-shattering or hugely imaginative, but it made sense within the context of the story and I was satisfied by it.

That said, I was frustrated by a few plot contrivances. Partway through the story, we’re told by one of the scientists helping to run the experiments that he thinks Tobias may not be truly divergent. The scientist runs genetic tests on both Tris and Tobias, and it turns out that Tobias is, indeed, “genetically damaged,” and non-divergent. I would have accepted this more readily if there were an explanation given for the scientist’s initial suspicion. What was it in Tobias’ behavior that made the scientist believe he may not be divergent/GP? We never find out. Instead, it seems this is a shortcut to give Tobias motivation for his next set of disastrous actions and the necessary rift between him and Tris. I was disappointed by this – it seemed like forced plot manipulation, rather than something that grows organically from the story and its characters.

The introduction of Tobias’ perspective has mixed results. I loved getting into his head and discovering that he is flawed, that he fears. The subplot involving his relationship with his mother has been derided by some reviewers, but I thought it was pretty great and very teen (albeit magnified). Seeing him without Tris’ filter is quite illuminating and humanizes him greatly. His voice, however, is so similar to Tris’ that I found myself flipping back a few pages every now and then to remind myself who was narrating.

The biggest thing, and the thing I’m most torn about, is Tris’ death. Roth set up the situation perfectly so that it had to be Tris to face the death serum. She’s the one with the resistance, we’ve known this since the first book. She’s also the one who tends to sacrifice the most, even for those who have betrayed her. It had to be her to go into the room. And it would have been impossible to believe that she could have escaped alive, knowing that their plan was pretty sloppy. Of course someone was waiting for her. It seemed like Roth had made this very big decision – to kill off her protagonist – early on in the series. Because of that, it didn’t feel manipulative. It’s incredibly gutsy, and I love that she went there. The way it’s written is heart-wrenching and highlights the importance of familial love, which always gets me.

My problem is with the existence of the serums in the first place. Yes, they’re there from the beginning, so they don’t quite feel like basic plot devices…but they actually kind of do. They seem so simplistic. Death serum causes you to die. Truth serum causes you to tell the truth. There doesn’t seem to be much science (or even “science”) behind their makeup, and the reason they exist in the first place is pretty weak. And I’m still waiting for an explanation as to why Tris was extraordinarily resistant.

My review up until this point makes it sound like I was pretty tepid toward the book, which is not the case. I liked it quite a lot. It’s a hefty book, but the pages flew by for me; I was thoroughly engrossed. Yes, I’ve read better books, and yes, I found flaws, but this concluding volume was so readable and so well-paced and so exciting. It’s certainly better than the second book. It has great ideas. It holds true to its characters. It expands the dystopian world. It introduces some hefty themes about human nature and violence. It’s a solid closer and I’m a bit sad it’s all over.

I’d love for others to chime in with their thoughts, particularly if you agree/disagree with any of the points I addressed here.