Comparative Cover Art

examining and ranking different covers of the same book in a snarky and irreverent manner.

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Annie On My Mind (Nancy Garden)

Here’s a mini-CCA for y’all.

Annie On My Mind - now there’s a book that evokes sighs. Before the deluge of queer YA lit, there were only a handful of books a high school lesbian could count on for any sort of foothold into the world of queer literature. Rubyfruit Jungle wasn’t in my high school library, and the canonical Well of Loneliness is more like a Well of Arid Description and Lengthy, Unnecessary Paragraphs.

But Annie is an awesome angsty love story between two girls who are too smart for their own good. Throw in some commentary on class and culture differences, and you’ve got a cocktail that left me heartaching and sobbing for days after I read it.

Here are the 4 covers for Annie On My Mind

It’s said that Nancy Garden herself hated the first cover, in which the titular Annie (black hair, right) looks kind of menacing and vampiric, but it’s my favorite of the covers for the spot-on depiction of these two early 1980s proto-queers. I love the bulky jackets (especially the true-to-book description of Annie’s coat), and the scene from which the cover takes its art - Annie and Liza on the ferry, waxing poetic about something or other. The 1998 cover is definitely the boring-but-inoffensive entry of the bunch, as it takes its protagonists to the Cloisters, where they do go on the world’s nerdiest date in the book. But there’s no tension here, none of the book’s signature sense of longing. I do love Annie’s skirt.

The 1992 cover is All about the Angst, and for that I love it. Remember the first time you held that first person’s hands and it felt like your whole world turned into a place of molten heartbeats? That captures it.

And the 2007 cover, as you might’ve guessed if you follow this blog, is horsedung. It’s too precious and neither of them is butch enough and the handholding looks like they’re examining each others’ manicures. Wtf.

Anyone else read/love this book?

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Beezus and Ramona (Beverly Cleary)

Here’s something I hope: that Beverly Cleary’s books don’t get so outdated that children stop reading them. We need characters like hers, kids who are smart and human and limited and imaginative, and parents who are reasonable, competent and occasionally ridiculous.  Let’s dive into the first official Ramona Book (Ramona is technically an Ascended Extra, as readers started demanding a book about her after her first appearance in a Henry Huggins book.)

#1

Here is my favorite thing about this cover: Ramona is in full-fledged Pest Mode, all tantrum and overalls and stubbornness, but she’s still got those patent-leather mary janes going on. It’s just the perfect kind of juxtaposition for her - she’s fundamentally an obedient, normative kid, but has just enough stubbornness in her mix to make her the neighborhood howler.

Aesthetically, the cover font is boofy in a 70s way, but the facial expressions are PERFECT.

#2

I also had this one growing up, which is why it makes it here. Beezus, what is UP with your dress? This is like bridesmaid wear circa 1989. Love the overalls, and the anachronistic All Stars on Ramona. Beezus’s face makes her look kind of bratty, but Ramona’s stubborn set-jaw bluster makes up for it.

#3

This Arabic cover has so much going for it - those illustrations match some of the ones inside the books, the sloppy color job doesn’t bother me, and I just really like how vibrant and different it is.

#4

Ok, who translated Ramona to “Kiki” because that’s weird. Other than that, this has kind of a Judy Blume vibe about it (circa Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing), that I like. Also the super-accurate details of Ramona’s ears, her having a graham cracker in her mouth, the red trike with the ribbons. Loving the chaos of her, and Beezus’s slacker butchness that is totally out of character.

#5

This has kind of a Schoolhouse Rock 70s feel to it. Kinda boring, but totally inoffensive.

#6

Seething Beezus is so totally trying to set her little sister on fire with her mind. Points for book accuracy with the appearance of Chevrolet, the green-haired doll.

#7

This one bores me, for some reason. Ramon’s expression is very meh, and while I like Exasperated Beezus, there’s nothing hugely compelling about this cover.

#8

Sorry, Selena Gomez and whoever that kid is, but: no. No no no no no. Beezus, you’re not posing for a Gap Catalogue. Ramona, you look way too innocent and delighted. This cover is emblematic of how bad the movie was  - how it sapped all the glorious stubborn, howling, bad-ideaness of Ramona and stuck her into some cutesy mischief-maker role. Blehhhh.

[comparativecoverart]

Annie On My Mind (Nancy Garden)

Here’s a mini-CCA for y’all.

Annie On My Mind - now there’s a book that evokes sighs. Before the deluge of queer YA lit, there were only a handful of books a high school lesbian could count on for any sort of foothold into the world of queer literature. Rubyfruit Jungle wasn’t in my high school library, and the canonical Well of Loneliness is more like a Well of Arid Description and Lengthy, Unnecessary Paragraphs.

But Annie is an awesome angsty love story between two girls who are too smart for their own good. Throw in some commentary on class and culture differences, and you’ve got a cocktail that left me heartaching and sobbing for days after I read it.

Here are the 4 covers for Annie On My Mind

It’s said that Nancy Garden herself hated the first cover, in which the titular Annie (black hair, right) looks kind of menacing and vampiric, but it’s my favorite of the covers for the spot-on depiction of these two early 1980s proto-queers. I love the bulky jackets (especially the true-to-book description of Annie’s coat), and the scene from which the cover takes its art - Annie and Liza on the ferry, waxing poetic about something or other. The 1998 cover is definitely the boring-but-inoffensive entry of the bunch, as it takes its protagonists to the Cloisters, where they do go on the world’s nerdiest date in the book. But there’s no tension here, none of the book’s signature sense of longing. I do love Annie’s skirt.

The 1992 cover is All about the Angst, and for that I love it. Remember the first time you held that first person’s hands and it felt like your whole world turned into a place of molten heartbeats? That captures it.

And the 2007 cover, as you might’ve guessed if you follow this blog, is horsedung. It’s too precious and neither of them is butch enough and the handholding looks like they’re examining each others’ manicures. Wtf.

Anyone else read/love this book?

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The Chronicles of Narnia!

Thanks, but no thanks!

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His Dark Materials?

I did Golden Compass, which turned into a study of Who Can Accurately Render An Armoured Bear.

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Beverly Cleary books? Especially the Ramona books.

That’s a wonderful idea. You just made the top of the running.

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Howl’s Moving Castle (Diana Wynne Jones)

A quick drive-by. There are SO MANY MORE covers than the ones I’ve shown here, by the way. I guess having an internationally acclaimed movie might increase demand in foreign markets.

#1

After a while of looking at these covers, I got sick of castles. So this one wins for having more than just an anthropomorphic castle on it. The ghostly face off to the left has some kind of Disney-Hades Hair thing going on. Points for the scarecrow. Minus points for phallic castle towers.

#2

Loved this one for looking like an old school fairy tale cover. The colors are perfect, the fire-breathing castle with the multiple wheel-feetis spot-on terrific. Gorgeous effort, good job Russia. At least I think it’s Russia.

#3

This French version makes the castle look like some cross between the Bastille and a coal plant. But bonus points for making it sound like “Howl’s Hurling Castle” (yes, I know that’s not the actual translation of hurle.)

#4

The Spaniards follow by adding pipes and tweaking the color balance into something that looks like a steampunk version of a Swiss hillside. Steampunk Heidi would chill here.

#5

DAAAAH LOOK AT THE ICKLE CASTLE DINOSAUR EATING GRASS. It’s almost cute! Even the smokestacks look like curly hair.

#6

Dear Arabic Cover, I don’t blame you for stealing the movie version. The movie verson was quite awesome. Except for the face on the castle’s potbellied-stove thing, which is creepy on this cover.  Understandably lazy effort.

#7

When I said I didn’t want the castle to be the sole focus of the cover, I was not thinking of this as a substitute. This is a poor choice. It looks like someone sliced a pillow over Sophie and Howl and is probably just offscreen laughing about it while they try not to sneeze.

#8

AUGH. NO THE PENSEIVE IS GOING TO EAT/MELT MEEE. ALSO I AM WEARING A BRITISH PERUKE AND I DON’T KNOW WHY. AAAAHGH.

#9

Hi, ladies. My name is Prince Derpface. I was modeled on Fabio after a bender and my castle was modeled on the Challenger. Please enjoy my fonts, as they were selected by my eight year old sister, who does not appear in this book.

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onescatterbrainednerd - found my DWJ entry!

[lastnightsreading]

Lois Lowry at Symphony Space, 10/19/14

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loving on lois today.

[nprbooks]

He said I can’t remember her name. And I told him her name. And then he said whatever happened to her? And I had to tell him about her death. … And so I began to think about writing a book about people who had found a way to manipulate human memory so that they wouldn’t have to remember anything bad.

Lois Lowry tells Neda Ulaby about how her father’s memory loss, which included her sister’s death at 28, inspired The Giver. (via nprbooks)

oof.

[periphery87]

Sandrilene fa Toren: a summary

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Anastasia Krupnik (Anastasia Book 1) Lois Lowry

So, I have this very real fear that the Anastasia books were somehow lost after my generation. Please tell me I’m wrong, Tumblers. We all need these books, and here’s why: Anastasia and her parents are smart. Really smart. They crack jokes at each other that are actually funny. They worry about money, and are realisitic about their jobs as English professor and children’s book illustrator. Anastasia worries about things like oily hair and embarrassing mothers and talks to a plaster bust of Sigmund Freud (in another book. She calls him Siggy.) But the point is that the adults in this book aren’t foils for the kids, or endless sources of wisdom, they’re characters in their own right, and allowed to have rich, fulfilling relationships with this kick-ass smarty pants girl.  Let’s get to it.

#1

I have read these books so many times, over so many year and own so many copies that I don’t actually remember which of these I owned first. Nevertheless, we’ll give this one the nostalgia points. I love the exasperation on her face, the pencil between her teeth, and the general chaos of her room.  I do not love her glasses, which are ridiculous and dated, or the fact that her hair, in the books, is described as blond. I think a lot of these publishers heard that this character was smart, nerdy, relatable and anxious and decided she could only be a brunette. We’ll be keeping count of this. Brunette Anastasia Count: 1

#2

We’ll squeak this one into Hair Integrity, because she at least looks like a very BLEACHED brunette. I love the quality of the illustrations in this series, the owly glasses are very true-to-book, and again with the chaos. I don’t love that she looks like a vacant-eyed member of a kiddie cult that worships whatever the hell is on her shirt.

#3

A slight variation on the one above, and not as well executed, though I’m digging the Pepter Pan collar.

I am decidedly not digging the hair situation.

Brunette Anastasia Count: 2

#4

So, this is kind of an illstrated version of the next cover, but I like it better because of the lovely smirk she’s got going on. This is the first hint of Anastasia’s sparky intelligence we get, and I’m all for it.

HATE the font, the overall pinkness and whatever is going on with the layout. A late 90s movie poster WE ARE NOT, book. Get real.

Brunette Anastasia Count :3

#5

I think this is one of the most recent covers, though the denim screams EARLY 2000s to me. I’m not offended by the font choices, though the glasses still kind of irk me. Don’t go halfway hipster and get stuck in 1992, Anastasia, go full on and get us some cat-eye action.

Brunette Anastasia Count: a disappointing 4

#6

I’m a little disappointed in this one, which gets the hair color right, at least, but really depicts this tomboy-science nerd (are those GOGGLES?) vibe that is the anthesis of klutzy, poetry-professor’s-daughter Anastasia.

#7

Because of how the baseball cap covers her hair, I could NOT stop thinking “cancer patient cover,” and so it has been named. Is it just me or does EVERY kids’ book about a kid with cancer feature something like this? Anyway, minus points for the CREEPY clowns, but bonus points for the tagline. And I can’t tell if this shirt gets bonus or minus points because it is. something. 

#8

Sorry for the crummy photo quality, which is really the biggest reason this one gets marked down. Perfectly adequate. 

Brunette Anastasia Count: Ridiculously enough, 5

#9

This one, for whatever reason, screams MOVIE-TIE-IN-MARKETING-SOMETHING-SOMETHING. The tilty cock of head. The pursed little smirk. The “Dear Diary” setup. The FUCKING HORSES ON THE WALLPAPER WTF. (Anastasia’s wallpaper is a subject of conversation in the book and is covered with old-fashioned men and women on unicycles and carrying parasolls and the like).  At least she’s blonde.

#10

Ooooohkay, you steaming pile of defiant WTF. I’m not even going to get into it with the red hair, but this whole GIANT BOW nonsense makes her look like a cross between...Ramona Quimby and Pebbles Flintstone. Or something. Eugh. And the self-satisfied facial expression does NOTHING about all the angst and turmoil that defines this character. Good DAY, cover. Good DAY.

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next up: anastasia krupnik. and if you don’t know these books, well, I promise Lois Lowry writes more than dystopic future and Holocaust novels. Sometimes you just want to time travel to the 70s and live in suburban Massachusetts with your neighbor, Gertrude Stein.

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there were too many captions to choose from. Coram’s probably in my top 5 tpierce characters of all time

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seriously, am I the only one who resents that she got her own book with Rosethorn instead of ,say, Lark?

[scionofloki]

Tall, Dark, Long-Winded, Know-It-All Sorcerers

Has/Does anyone read/remember the Enchanted Forest Series by Patricia Wrede? And if so have you also read The Immortals Quartet by Tamora Pierce? Because I’m seriously trying to figure out if I’m pulling some kind of an Electra complex on Numair because of Telemain.

(Side Note, yes I know an Electra complex is when a daughter loves men who remind her of her father, but I’m using here as an I adored Telemain as a kid, and then fell in love with Numair years later as a teenager because of the similarities.)

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I am so glad I am not the only person who has figured out this connection. Also, if we think of the similarities as a cross-canonical lineage, then do we count Neal in that line? Or Niko?

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the sign at morwen’s house. an early embroidery experiment.

[excerptsonlife]

Lalasa stood in the waiting crowd again as King Jonathan (blue tunic, to match his eyes) knighted the realm’s first official lady knight. Lalasa beamed to see the three women who stepped up to give Kel her shield: Thayet, Buri, and Shinkokami. Lalasa knew every stitch on them, but it was the honest way they glowed with pride at their young friend that struck her hardest. Kel slid the shield onto her arm, blinking as it fit perfectly. She lifted her eyes to find Lalasa in the crowd. Lalasa grinned back at her, wiping tears from her cheeks. She could see the affection in Kel’s eyes—you cry at everything. For you, Lalasa thought. Today, just for you.

the small (via excerptsonlife)