Why The Pretty White Girl YA Book Cover Trend Needs To End.
I love it when I find a writer with whom I agree, who is much more genteel and polished than I whilst still giving a teensy rant. So, so, so many well articulated points made. Here's hoping she's not just preachin' to the choir.
Happy Weekend...
In case you didn't know: "Ello is short for Ellen Oh. Transplanted from Brooklyn, NY, I'm a lawyer, a writer, and a college instructor now living near the nation's capital. I have three smart, beautiful little girls and an ultra-supportive husband who tells me to write every day so that maybe, one day, I'll actually get a book published. I'm repped by the amazing Joe Monti of Barry Goldblatt Literary. And what do you know, Da Man was right! My first book, Prophecy: The Dragon King Chronicles, is being published by HarperCollins Childrens for release in Winter 2013! Life is very good."
3 comments:
Judging from the whopping 83 comments on her post, it seems like a lot of people have opinions on this! I'm going to leave mine here (for fear it will get lost in the crowd over there)... :)
I'm happy that our book covers have not contributed to the cover trend she's talking about, though. I hadn't really realized there was such a trend in that direction because my eye tends to be caught by very different covers, visually speaking. The ones, for instance, that predominate on that list of Goodreads fave YA covers are mostly ones that I wouldn't find particularly eye-catching, and I probably wouldn't have as a teen, either (at that point I wanted to be a cover illustrator, so I was very attracted by covers that featured well-done paintings).
I will admit that sometimes I have sighed a bit over my covers. They're so different. Part of me doesn't want my covers to be different, I want my covers to look... trendy... like everyone else's books.
Very high school, eh?
I am thrilled, though, not to have contributed to this trend - the paperback versions of both of my books, while contributing to the universally sighed over Pretty Girl Head cover have not been Pretty Caucasian Girl Heads - I doubt a book I write ever will be.
I think we should stop with the heads. More artwork, more paintings... and yet, Librarians admitted to me that they wouldn't buy MARE'S WAR with the hardback cover because they hated it, and I know some people hate that; some have already said that the HAPPY FAMILIES cover doesn't work for them.
Sometimes it's really hard to tell that we really want change.
Wow. That was a great post. I wanted to add a comment, but also thought mine would be lost in the crowd. I so agree with what Ellen said. While I have liked some of the covers, like any "trend," publishers can sometimes beat it to death (hence many covers girls in prom dresses which have no bearing on the stories). Some have definitely been guilty of whitewashing.
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