On Book Covers
by Elan
Hello everyone! This week's blog will be something a little different - as the title suggests, this post will be about the book covers on YA books and beyond. (Comment material at the bottom.)
Let's begin with discussing how book covers impact one' perception of a book. (To be clear, majority of this post will be about young adult fiction books.)
We all know the age-old saying - "Don't judge a book by its cover." And while that metaphor holds very well for judging a human by its "cover", books just don't work that way.
No - a book's cover doesn't determine its quality, but correlation doesn't equal causation, does it? Generally, a good cover does several things for its book, but they all culminate in the overarching goal of grabbing readers. Is it flashy? Artsy? Does it have people on it? If a book cover looks old-fashioned or bland, the likelihood that one would pick it up is slim. On the other hand, especially for easily-tempted readers like me, if there's a book with an interesting, artsy, and/or pretty cover sitting out, there's a calling to read the book I often can't resist.
Now, onto cover art.
The first topic I want to explore is how the abstractness or artsy-ness of a book cover affects how it draws people in.
Books like Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon and Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld make clever use of the cover to create a feel for the mood of the book, while not giving away too much information about the book's contents. Everything, Everything is a touching story about family and young love, thus its cover is white with rainbow flowers and such on it. The bright colors and abstract layers of flowers give the cover a cheery feeling.
Leviathan on the other hand is a fast-paced steampunk story, a tale of a daring commoner girl and the prodigal young prince she loves in a world where the past meets the future. It's much more complicated than that, but the steampunk-style, very abstract cover sets the lighting just right.
Next, let's talk about the impact of putting characters' likenesses on the covers of books.
Sometimes, the cover artists successfully depict the character(s) in relatively close-up poses without giving away the character(s) or ruining any mental image of those characters the reader may have, like on the cover of Sky in the Deep by Adrienne Young. Eelyn, the book's wonderful heroine, is shown with her face half-cloaked in shadow, but the contours of her face are still very visible.
Other times, despite how good the book may or may not be in actuality, the book covers are unrelentingly unflattering to the characters. Such an example can be found in the cover remakes of the Ember in the Ashes series by Sabaa Tahir, where two or three or the main characters are found on the cover. The people on the covers look very little like the ones we find in Tahir's mystical world, and the characters in the readers' heads often don't match very well with the ones on the new covers of Ember in the Ashes.
The last topic I'd like to cover is more of a rant about book art in general.
Whenever I see book covers or in-book art that clearly comes from someone who has not read the book, it hurts. It tears up my mental images of the book, and I try as hard as I can to abstain from looking to closely at the images. It really is a disappointment to see visual interpretations of the story butchered so badly so often.
If you've read this far, congratulations! You are now one of my favorite people. Thanks for sticking with me through this, and if you're looking to comment on this post, besides the review of my blog and stuff, I would like to pose a question: What books were you drawn to because of its cover, and why?
by Elan
Hello everyone! This week's blog will be something a little different - as the title suggests, this post will be about the book covers on YA books and beyond. (Comment material at the bottom.)
Let's begin with discussing how book covers impact one' perception of a book. (To be clear, majority of this post will be about young adult fiction books.)
We all know the age-old saying - "Don't judge a book by its cover." And while that metaphor holds very well for judging a human by its "cover", books just don't work that way.
No - a book's cover doesn't determine its quality, but correlation doesn't equal causation, does it? Generally, a good cover does several things for its book, but they all culminate in the overarching goal of grabbing readers. Is it flashy? Artsy? Does it have people on it? If a book cover looks old-fashioned or bland, the likelihood that one would pick it up is slim. On the other hand, especially for easily-tempted readers like me, if there's a book with an interesting, artsy, and/or pretty cover sitting out, there's a calling to read the book I often can't resist.
Now, onto cover art.
The first topic I want to explore is how the abstractness or artsy-ness of a book cover affects how it draws people in.
Books like Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon and Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld make clever use of the cover to create a feel for the mood of the book, while not giving away too much information about the book's contents. Everything, Everything is a touching story about family and young love, thus its cover is white with rainbow flowers and such on it. The bright colors and abstract layers of flowers give the cover a cheery feeling.
Leviathan on the other hand is a fast-paced steampunk story, a tale of a daring commoner girl and the prodigal young prince she loves in a world where the past meets the future. It's much more complicated than that, but the steampunk-style, very abstract cover sets the lighting just right.
Next, let's talk about the impact of putting characters' likenesses on the covers of books.
Sometimes, the cover artists successfully depict the character(s) in relatively close-up poses without giving away the character(s) or ruining any mental image of those characters the reader may have, like on the cover of Sky in the Deep by Adrienne Young. Eelyn, the book's wonderful heroine, is shown with her face half-cloaked in shadow, but the contours of her face are still very visible.
Other times, despite how good the book may or may not be in actuality, the book covers are unrelentingly unflattering to the characters. Such an example can be found in the cover remakes of the Ember in the Ashes series by Sabaa Tahir, where two or three or the main characters are found on the cover. The people on the covers look very little like the ones we find in Tahir's mystical world, and the characters in the readers' heads often don't match very well with the ones on the new covers of Ember in the Ashes.
The last topic I'd like to cover is more of a rant about book art in general.
Whenever I see book covers or in-book art that clearly comes from someone who has not read the book, it hurts. It tears up my mental images of the book, and I try as hard as I can to abstain from looking to closely at the images. It really is a disappointment to see visual interpretations of the story butchered so badly so often.
If you've read this far, congratulations! You are now one of my favorite people. Thanks for sticking with me through this, and if you're looking to comment on this post, besides the review of my blog and stuff, I would like to pose a question: What books were you drawn to because of its cover, and why?
Nice post! This may be the first post I've seen that is not a book review so this definitely stands out. I like how you went into thorough detail about every aspect of a book's cover, ranging from the general art design to things like how it might affect a reader's mental image of a character. If you were to do something like this again, maybe include a couple images of the covers. You wouldn't have to do it for every book mentioned, but seeing the cover along side your description would help.
ReplyDeleteI really think this analysis of book covers is a unique topic to discuss. I enjoy how you went through how a book's cover can draw people in. Usually, I come up with my own image of a character that sometimes differs from what is on the cover. If I find the cover to be an inaccurate representation of that character, I'll continue using my own mental image to represent the character. One book I was drawn to because of the cover and author was Renegades by Marissa Meyer. I kind of like the art style and how it leaves most of the characters' facial features up to the reader's imagination.
ReplyDeleteGreat post! I really liked how you went over how certain types of covers work well for certain books, but if you do a second post of book covers, I think putting pictures of the book covers you talk about would help people visualize them. I like how you went over both the positives and negatives of putting people on the covers of books. I agree with your frustration about covers that clearly do not have anything to do with characters in the book. A book I was drawn to was Keeper of the Lost Cities by Shannon Messenger because the cover is really beautiful and makes you wonder more about it.
ReplyDeleteI highly agree with this post. I think it is very important for a book to have a good cover to draw readers in but at the same time it is more important to have a good book underneath all that cover art. I like how you get right to the point in your blog so that you don't waste time and leave more time for your actual argument. I also agree that having a book cover drawn by someone who has not read the book is often times very bad for the book as a whole and happens far too often. Overall, you have a very well written review that gets your opinion across in a well and organized manner.
ReplyDelete