The Demented Children's Book Photoshopping Contest

The website Something Awful has a Photoshop Phriday piece of mildly twisted children's book covers. What I appreciate about these is that with a couple exceptions here and there they've limited themselves to just changing the titles. There are the usual groaners and infantile natterings, but I do appreciate some here and there. Particularly "Sly Little Bear Undresses You With His Eyes" and "A Child's Guide to the Eurovision Song Contest".

Thanks to Boing Boing for the link.

Beckoning You Towards the Becker Man

Psst!

How talented an Art Director is Chad Beckerman anyway?

Check out some of the covers he's worked on. Puh-retty amazing.

At Last!

What do I like?
Book covers.

When do I like 'em?
Now.

What do I want?
A blog that discusses book jackets from the perspective of an Associate Art Director. Preferably one that's a former HMOCL, if at all possible.

What have I got?
Just the thing.

Drove Herself to Madness With a Silver Spoon

I hope you all took note of the interesting bit of news gracing bookshelves of doom just yesterday. With the upcoming Dark Is Rising picture (one that I am quite excited about) in the works, it's just about the right time for S&S to start rethinking David Wiesner's old paperback covers. The result? Check out the new look.


Leila said almost everything that could be said about this better than I. And at least one person I showed it to said it was very very... suggestive. Hm.

That said, the new Greenwitch cover?


Huge improvement. I've never liked Wiesner's sweet little old lady as found here:


She doesn't look dangerous and ancient. She looks like she's gonna bake you a batch of homemade brownies and give you a sweet little kiss on the crown of your head before she tucks you into bed. The original Greenwitch cover is still the best..


... though I confess to a secret love of the German version as well.


Thanks to bookshelves of doom for the link.

Covers Abundant. Covers Galore.

In this fast-paced day and age, waiting even a day to post something as hot as the new Harry Potter covers means you're behind the times. "Go to bed, old man!," scream the masses. And so it goes.

Now every time a new Harry Potter is due out I make sure to buy a British edition because I much prefer their covers and (sorry, Cheryl) Britishisms. Well, this year it's not the clear cut choice it used to be. America's covers have gotten classier with every passing year while Britain has gotten...

I think goofier might be the only accurate word to use. Yes. Goofier. Let's play a little compare and contrast, shall we?

America's Cover:I'm fairly certain that I'm the only person who likes this. I love the new color palette with its creams and browns. I like the look of Harry, and check out the wraparound:
Nice. Of course, there is the fact that Harry and Voldemort look as if they're doing Yoga. There is that. Especially with that lovely sunrise in the background. Then again, it would be hilarious if Voldemort saw the errors of his ways all thanks to the power of the Astavakrasana position.

Britain's Cover:I got one word for you: Madcap. This looks like National Lampoon: Harry Potter Vacation. I can't tell if these kids are getting thrown out of the big golden circle into (what I'm fairly certain must be) Harry's Uncle Scrooge-like inheritance or if they're being sucked OUT of the money pile. Plus our hero has apparently been aged to approximately 37. Most odd. Even weirder is when you look on the back and get this:



Said one of my co-workers when he saw this, "Is that the Fortress of Solitude?" Yes! That's the twist none of us were seeing. Rowling has secretly paired with DC Comics and the result is a Harry Potter/Superman crossover spectacular! And finally:

Britain's ADULT Cover:Unlike the adult Half-Blood Prince cover, this puppy doesn't give anything away. We've already seen this locket before (once in flashback and once in person, if I don't miss my guess). Just lovely. And if you squint really really hard you can make out the description of the story for this last volume. It doesn't say anything you don't already know, though.

Example of How a Cover SHOULD Be Done

Here is the new paperback cover for Jenny Han's first middle grade novel, Shug.


Ahem.

What This Cover Is Doing Correctly:

1. No dismembered females. You can see her face and, remarkably enough, HIS face too.
2. Both a girl and a boy on the same cover and they're under the age of 14 AND they're not fighting aliens side-by-side? A true rarity.
3. Love how they worked in the popsicle from both the book and the original cover.
4. They don't look like models. Just regular kids.
5. I like the expression on the girl's face.
6. I love how they look exactly the right age. Twelve going on thirteen. I don't know the last time I saw a twelve-year-old actually looking like a twelve-year-old on a photographic cover.
7. She looks happy. He looks oblivious. And that, ladies and gentlemen, could well be the theme of the book..

I was a little hesitant to see the MIX label on Jenny's book, but it's on a cool eraser and, honestly, doesn't distract. Well done, all around.

New Blog?

By all accounts there appears to be a new blog in town. I was sifting through my Galleycat and found the following bit o' info regarding Publisher's Weekly's revamped website; "The jury's still out on the other blogs, though Alison Morris's "ShelfTalker" can no doubt feed into the growing children's lit blog presence and market."

Growing kidlit blog presence? Why that applies to me!

So I hopped on over and saw that this Alison Morris person writes mighty well. Mighty. She has a piece (only one) in which she discusses the weird trend currently going on where publishers will change not just the cover but the NAME of a youth novel when it goes from hardcover to paperback.

The three novels I’ve recently purchased for our store that were apparently (in the eyes of their publishers) lamed by their own names are: Naughts and Crosses by Malorie Blackman, now appearing in paperback as Black and White; Gideon the Cutpurse by Linda Buckley-Archer, soon to appear in paperback as The Time Travelers; and Olivia Kidney and the Exit Academy by Ellen Potter, coming soon to a bookshelf near you as a paperback entitled Olivia Kidney Stops for No One.

Woah woah woah woah. They're renaming Gideon the Cutpurse? Children, if you didn't read that book last year it was one of the finest children's fantasies of 2006. Beautiful cover too (we'll forgive Ms. Morris for putting it down). This trend seriously disturbs me to the core of my soul and I didn't even know it was going on. And that, in essence, is why a Publisher's Weekly kidlit blog is going to turn out to be mighty important. Let's all keep our eye on this one for a while, shall we?

Thanks to Galleycat for the link.

Les Belles Timbre-Postes

As I mentioned some time last week, I collect worldwide Harry Potter books. I like the covers, you see. Multiple artist interpretations (I'll show you the Dutch zombie cover this coming Sunday) make for a interesting reading experience. And I've always suspected that based on their covers alone, the French don't much care for HP.

Example A:


Example B:


Need I say more?
Credit where credit's due then. America wears its heart on its sleeve for Harry, but have we put him on our postage stamps yet? Not to the best of my knowledge. Know who has? The French. Guess I owe you guys an apology. Still, would it kill you to spice up your covers a little? Please? Pretty please?

Where In the World Is Sessalee Hensley?

Or rather, who in the world is she?

A comment on a recent Longstocking post piqued my interest regarding this woman. You see, author Coe Booth wrote that she knew a YA author who was down in the dumps because Barnes & Ignoble refused to sell his new book. That means a dip in significant sales, no? So I'm reading through the comments and I come to this one from an Anonymous source.

i worked for b&n many years back and learned much about the dark side of book retail so, yes, i knew this could happen.

her name is sessalee hensley and she's the primary fiction buyer for b&n. it is no secret in the industry that if she objects to a cover when she sees a galley a publisher will change it completely in order to assure b&n carries it.

Oh so? Well excuse me, oh anonymous poster, but I've never even heard of this woman. Could a single gal really be so powerful in the biz?

Turns out, absolutely. Mediabistro, for example, had this to say about her:

The most important publishing person you've never heard of is Sessalee Hensley, the chief fiction buyer for Barnes & Noble. Unless, of course, you actually work in book publishing, in which case, you're absentmindedly scrawling her name on errant scraps of paper and praying to the distribution gods that she waves her magic wand over your latest project, stacking it in piles of 200 next to the front door at every store from Bakersfield to Boston.

Ug. I knew that B&N and Borders have enough sway that if they don't like a publisher's book cover they can tell them to change it willy-nilly (in my heart of hearts I believe that's what happened to poor beleaguered A Friendship for Today). The fact that Borders does this, by the way, is hilarious. I guess that since they've such teeny tiny children's sections, a publisher would do anything to be one of the five books presented there. So it all comes down to one gal and one gal alone. One POWERFUL gal. Miss Snark said of her, "Sessalee Hensley is very very smart, and very very seldom wrong."

Her effect on your average everyday writer? Apparently she can make or break you. What I can't quite determine is if she controls children's fiction alongside adult and YA. Does anyone happen to know off the top of their head?

Fun With Covers

You guys know my penchant for cool covers. I love them so much that whenever I hear that a friend is going out of the country I beg them to buy me a Harry Potter from whatever region they're visiting, just so I can have a new cover to look at. Current kooky cover winner of a nation: Italy. Them guys is craaaazy.

When I was a child my aunt wrote a little YA (it was called something else then) and sometimes she'd send us the cool worldwide covers of her book. It was with great pleasure then that I saw a recent posting on The Fire Escape by delightful, charming, sweet-as-sugar-on-the-vine author Mitali Perkins. In it, she compares the various covers of her first book The Sunita Experiment. That first cover is the one we have in our children's room in paperback form. Right between Lynn Rae Perkins and Julie Ann Peters. Good company.

The Princess Academy Get a Whole New Look

Check it out:

This is the new paperback cover that'll be coming out in April. I think I really like this. Nothing against the original cover, of course, but I respect this girl. She has spunk and looks like she'd have the iron will to stand up to bandits and mean schoolmates alike. Two thumbs up.

Thanks to the Shannon Hale blog for the link.

Movie Tie-In Covers

It raises heckles faster than greased lightening. You walk into a bookstore, idly pick up an old favorite, and find a movie cover slapped haphazardly on your favorite title. Right now we're seeing the Bridge to Terabithia movie on an old classic, but at least it sells books right? Less easy to justify was the entirely ridiculous Ella Enchanted cover with Anne Hathaway sparkling those pearly whites at us. And even worse still? Steve Martin on a republished edition of Cheaper By the Dozen. We circulate one of these at work, and I can only justify handing it out by imagining the shock on the child readers' faces when they realize how distant the movie was to the original title.

So it was that The Guardian wrote a recent article entitled Trials and Adaptations that crows beautifully over this topic. The piece is unapologetically British (with references to things like the Richard and Judy Book Club rather than Oprah) but the point remains the same.

Thanks to the Bound To Read MySpace Blog for the link.

Crazy Cover Time

All kinds of wonderful coverish news came out recently. Children's Illustration found all these covers on the Look, See blog from the past, sans dust jackets. Definitely seek out the What's Inside of Me? portion, dated August 11, 2006. Old school creepy and cool.

Then from the Raising WEG blog is a look at the new Little House covers. The author of the post has a remarkably good point when she says that Almanzo looks more than a little bit like Orlando Bloom on These Happy Golden Years. See for yourself:

And finally one of my Judges on my Middle Grade Fiction committee of the Cybil Award, one Eric Berlin, has just seen the cover of his new book. We are all very proud, Mr. Berlin. Well done indeed.

A Solution To That Age Old Cover Problem

Are you a new author?
Do you fret and fuss over the decisions forced upon you by your first-time publisher?
Do you find that the cover of your very first book looks, not to put too fine a point on it, positively horrid? Like a kind of sci-fi post-apocalyptic horror image on your not-sci-fi-at-all book?
Well, fret no longer because the solution is here!
With the quick application of a vinyl sticker you can change your book from this:

... to this...

Yes, folks. Get the cover YOU deserve. Just slap the new one on top of the old and voila! You're happy. The publisher's happy. Everybody's pleased.

Thanks to MediaBistro for the link.

Cover Luvin', Had Me a Blast

Aussie Diana Wynne Jones covers.

The first came out last year...


That's the Aussie paperback version.

The next according to the Misrule blog is a new on coming out in March and edited by Sharyn November. This is the cover that apparently will be found in Australia, Britain, AND America.


I like the first. The verdict is being weighed on the second.