I feel like I should at least try to collect some of the best political covers from the past year or so together into a post at some point. On the other hand, I really don’t want to…
I’m not entirely sure why, but cover of Something Great and Beautiful brought to mind the 2014 cover of the UK edition of The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison, designed by Tom Darracott for Granta. They’re really not that similar, and yet…
Son of Amity by Peter Nathaniel Malae; design by David Drummond (Oregon State University Press / October 2018)
So here it is, Merry Xmas, everybody’s having fun, my YA (and middle-grade) covers round-up for 2017. This is far from my area of expertise (I mostly work on the adult trade side of things), but until someone else steps up to do a annual post on YA covers with design credits and publisher details you’re stuck with me. Sorry.
All the picks are, of course, mine, but thank you to all the designers who have helped me over the year with covers, suggestions, and credits, and special thanks to Erin Fitzsimmons at HarperCollins and Sarah Creech at Simon & Schuster who helped me with this post in particular. Happy holidays!
Like all the best things on The Casual Optimist, this post started life as a conversation on Twitter. The topic this time was the under-representation of YA book designers in all these end of the year cover lists. YA covers are becoming more and more sophisticated, yet my posts this year have rarely featured them, so feel that I am unquestionably at fault here. To make some kind of amends, I thought I would post a selection of 50 YA covers from 2014. Many, many thanks to all the book designers and publishing folk (including my colleagues Alisha, Brooke, and Megan at Raincoast) for their suggestions and assistance. And special thanks to Serah-Marie and Derek at Type Books for letting me browse their shelves with my notebook in hand…
