A library patron who is the father of two boys asked me the
other day for recommendations for “books with bad covers” for his seventh
grader. Intrigued, I asked for the genesis of the request. The patron replied
that his son recently had checked out several novels with “awesome” covers only
to find out the stories told in the books were mediocre at best. It was
essentially a life lesson focused on the adage that “you can’t judge a book by
its cover.”
But this young patron decided to take it one step further.
He figured that, if the books with great covers were poorly written, then
perhaps he should instead be looking for “books with bad covers” in hopes they
were well written. Now that I got the idea, I was able to recommend a couple of
books – thrillers -- whose original, pedestrian covers utterly failed to convey
the exciting plots within the covers. The publishers of both books ended up
changing the covers to better reflect the page-turning plots, with the result
that the books now fairly fly off the shelves of my library.
Here’s what I recommended for the young patron looking for
“books with bad covers” (remember, you have to find the versions with the
original covers if you want “bad covers”!):
- Stormbreaker by Anthony Horowitz. This is the first in
the 10-book series about a teenage spy named Alex Rider. Horowitz, a
highly-respected adult novelist in Great Britain, clearly had great fun
developing the many spycraft gadgets used by Alex, such as a Geiger counter
disguised as a Game Boy and a CD player that contains a lethal saw blade.
Horowitz, the father of two sons, told me in an interview several years ago
that he was quite unhappy with the original cover of “Stormbreaker” and was
thrilled when Philomel, the publisher, agreed to commission a snazzier cover
for the paperback edition, which now features a silver foil lightning bolt on a
dark blue cover. Recently that “lightning bolt” cover has been supplanted by
another one branding the book as part of the “Alex Rider” series, yet
maintaining the snazzy look. The “Alex Rider” books are great for readers ages
10-14.
Interested in the idea of “good books with bad covers”?
Check out these entertaining blog posts about the subject of bad book covers:
No comments:
Post a Comment