karl j mountford – The Casual Optimist

My first post of 2021 is a look back at some of the young adult covers that caught my eye last year. I’m sure that I have missed a lot of great work (waves hands at everything that went on in 2020), so apologies if your favourites aren’t here. Happy New Year!

Agnes at the End of the World by Kelly McWilliams; design by Marcie Lawrence and Jenny Kimura; illustration by Tom Bagshaw (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers / June 2020)

All Our Worst Ideas by Vicky Skinner; design by Katie Klimowicz (Swoon Reads / August 2020)

Before the Ever After by Jacqueline Woodson; design by Theresa Evangelista; illustration by Stephanie Singleton (Nancy Paulsen Books / September 2020)

Black Canary: Breaking Silence by Alexandra Monir; design by Regina Flath; illustration by Jen Bartel (Random House Books for Young Readers / December 2020)

Black Girl Unlimited by Echo Brown; design by Carol Ly; illustration by Noa Denmon (Henry Holt & Company / January 2020)

The Burning by Laura Bates; design by Philip Pascuzzo (Sourcebooks Fire / April 2020)

Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas; design Liz Dresner; illustration by Mars Lauderbaugh (Swoon Reads / September 2020)

Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo; design by Erin Fitzsimmons; illustration by Bijou Karman (Quill Tree Books / May 2020)

Cloak of Night by Evelyn Skye; design by Alice Wang; illustration by DOFRESH; lettering by Vasava (Balzer + Bray / February 2020)

Coming Up For Air by Nicole B. Tyndall; design by Casey Moses; art by Pedro Tapa (Delacorte Press / December 2020)

Darius the Great Deserves Better by Adib Khorram; design by Samira Iravani; illustration by Adams Carvalho (Dial / August 2020)

The same team also created the cover for Darius the Great is Not Okay:

The Easy Part of Impossible by Sarah Tomp; design by David DeWitt; art by Samantha French (HarperTeen / April 2020)

Everything Sad is Untrue by Daniel Nayeri; art direction by Elizabeth Parisi; illustration by David Curtis (Levine Querido / August 2020)

Fable by Adrienne Young; design by Kerri Resnick; photograph by Sveltana Belyaeva (Wednesday Books / September 2020)

Felix Ever After by Kacen Callender; design by Chris Kwon; illustration by Alex Cabal (Balzer + Bray / May 2020)

Forest of Souls by Lori M. Lee; design by Laura Benton; illustration by Charlie Bowater (Page Street Kids / June 2020)

Furia by Yamile Saied Méndez; design by Laura Williams; illustration by Rachelle Baker (Algonquin Young Readers / September 2020)

The Good Girls by Claire Eliza Bartlett; design Diana Sousa; Illustration by Kaethe Butcher (HarperTeen / December 2020)

Goodbye from Nowhere by Sara Zarr; design by Alice Wang (Balzer + Bray / April 2020)

Grief Angels by David Owen; design by Leo Nickolls (Atom / March 2020)

Grown by Tiffany D. Jackson; design by Erin Fitzsimmons; illustration by Rachelle Baker (Katherine Tegen Books / September 2020)

Inkheart by Cornelia Funke; cover art by Karl J Mountford (Chicken House / April 2020)

*Inkspell* by Cornelia Funke; cover art by Karl J Mountford (Chicken House / April 2020)

It’s My Life by Stacie Ramey; design by Kerri Resnick (Sourcebooks Fire / January 2020)

The Kingdom of Back by Marie Lu; design by Kristie Radwilowicz; illustration by David Curtis (G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers / March 2020)

Lobizona by Romina Garber; design by Kerri Resnick; illustation by Daria Hlazatova (Wednesday Books / August 2020)

Nobody Knows But You by Anica Mrose Rissi; design by Molly Fehr; illustration by Hokyoung Kim (Quill Tree Books / September 2020)

Not So Pure and Simple by Lamar Giles; design by Molly Fehr; illustration by Jor Ros (Quill Tree Books / January 2020)

Sasha Masha by Agnes Borinsky; design by Cassie Gonzalez; illustration by Carolina Rodriguez Fuenmayor (Farrar, Straus and Giroux / November 2020)

Seasons of the Storm by Elle Cosimano; design by Jenna Stempel-Lobell; art by Pauline Boiteux (HarperTeen / June 2020)

See No Color by Shannon Gibney; design by Chelsea Hunter; illustration by Bee Johnson (Holiday House / July 2020)

Shielded by KayLynn Flanders; design by Regina Flath; art by Alex Dos Diaz (Delacorte / July 2020)

The Silence of Bones by June Hur; design by Katie Klimowicz; art by Kasiq Jungwoo (Feiwel & Friends / April 2020)

Smash It by Francina Simone; design by Gigi Lau; illustration by Benjamin Wachenje (Inkyard Press / September 2020)

A Song of Wraiths and Ruin by Roseanne A. Brown; design by Jessie Gang; art by Tawny Chatmon; lettering by Martina Flor (Balzer + Bray / June 2020)

The Stepping Off Place by Cameron Kelly Rosenblum; design by Catherine San Juan; Illustration by Michaela Goade (Quill Tree Books / July 2020)

The Sullivan Sisters by Kathryn Ormsbee; design by Chloë Foglia; Illustration by Pedro Tapa; lettering by Danielle Davis (Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers / June 2020)

Ten Things I Hate About Pinky by Sandhya Menon; design by Sarah Creech; photograph by Jacob Pritchard (Simon Pulse / July 2020)

I think this works well with the covers for Menon’s previous books, especially 2017’s When Dimple Met Rishi, designed by Regina Flath.

When Dimple Met Rishi by Sandhya Menon; design by Regina Flath (Simon Pulse / May 2017)

These Vengeful Hearts by Katherin Laurin; design Elita Sidiropoulou (Inkyard Press / September 2020)

This is Not a Ghost Story by Andrea Portes; design by Alice Wang; illustration by Francesco Bongiorni (HarperTeen / November 2020)

Tigers Not Daughters by Samantha Mabry; design Laura Williams; art and lettering by Beatriz Ramo / Naranjalidad (Algonquin Young Readers / March 2020)

Traitor by Amanda McCrina; design by Faceout Studio (Farrar, Straus and Giroux / August 2020)

Watch Over Me by Nina Lacour; design by Samira Iravani; illustration by Pippa Young (Dutton / September 2020)

The Whitsun Daughters by Carrie Mesrobian ; design by Samira Iravani; lettering by Maricor/Maricar (Dutton / August 2020)

A Wicked Magic by Sasha Laurens; design by Dana Li (Razorbill / July 2020)

Winter, White and Wicked by Shannon Dittemore; design by Hana Anouk Nakamura; illustration by Ruben Ireland (Amulet / October 2020)

The Year After You by Nina de Pass; design Casey Moses; art by Elena Pancorbo (Delacorte / March 2020)

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Hey. Here are the book covers that have caught my eye online this month. I hope that they bring a little joy in this very grim time.

If you have the means to buy books at the moment (and I appreciate that is not going to be the case for everyone), please consider supporting your local bookstore. I know a lot of stores are taking orders by email even if they are not answering the phone, and many are offering local delivery if curbside pick-up is not currently an option. The situation seems to be changing daily, so if a store wasn’t accepting orders yesterday, they might be today. We are all figuring this out on the fly.

If you are in the US and don’t have access to a local bookstore, there is Bookshop.org who are trying to provide some financial support to independents. If there are similar initiatives elsewhere, let me know — I’m happy to share the link.

Afterlife by Julia Alvarez; design by Jaya Miceli (Algonquin Books / April 2020)

Barn 8 by Deb Olin Unferth; design by Kimberly Glyder (Graywolf / March 2020)

The Beauty of Your Face by Sahat Mustafah; design by Grace Han (W.W. Norton / April 2020)

Becoming George Orwell by John Rodden; design by Monograph / Matt Avery; illustration by Lauren Nassef (Princeton University Press / February 2020)

I wonder where the eye — particularly the combination of the colour red and the eye — as a symbol of Orwell and Nineteen Eighty-Four originated? Does it go back to the 1960s and the Penguin paperback designed by Germano Facetti?

I understand that the eye is a short-hand for the surveillance state. But it is almost as if that is now considered the only element of the book worth visualizing (David Pearson’s cover is in an interesting exception in that it cleverly focuses on censorship rather than surveillance).

I haven’t read Nineteen Eighty-Four in years, but my memory is that the infamous “Big Brother is Watching You” poster is a face whose eyes seem to follow you when you move — something I think Matt’s cover above captures quite nicely — not an all-seeing, omniscient eye. The first time I read the novel, I imagined Big Brother looked something like Lord Kitchener / Uncle Sam in the recruitment posters. I was more traumatized by Room 101 to be honest… Has anyone put rats on the cover of Nineteen Eighty-Four?

The Book of Longings by Sue Monk Kidd; design by Sara Wood (Viking / April 2020)

Los Falcón by Melissa Rivero; design by Adalis Martinez (Vintage Espanol / April 2020)

The cover of the English-language US edition published by Ecco last year was designed by Allison Saltzman with lettering by Boyoun Kim.

Godshot by Chelsea Bieker; design by Nicole Caputo (Catapult / March 2020)

I actually read Godshot in manuscript form last year and liked it a lot. It is set in drought-stricken California, but I had Ry Cooder’s soundtrack to Paris, Texas playing in my head the whole time I was reading it.

I also wanted to give a quick shout-out to Nicole who was diagnosed with breast cancer at the end of last year and bravely shared her story on social media recently. Stay safe, and get well soon, Nicole. :-)

Grief by Svend Brinkmann; design by David A. Gee (Polity Press / April 2020)

David has designed the covers for a number of books by Svend Brinkmann, including Standpoints, which featured on the blog back in March 2018.

Hinton by Mark Blacklock; design by Jamie Keenan (Granta / April 2020)

Inkheart by Cornelia Funke; cover art by Karl J Mountford (Chicken House / April 2020)

Mountford has also created covers for the other two books in the series, Inkspell and Inkdeath. I love these.

A Luminous Republic by Andrés Barba; design by Mark R. Robinson; illustration by Carly Miller (Mariner Books / April 2020)

The cover of the UK edition of A Luminous Republic, which Granta is publishing in a couple of months, was designed by Luke Bird. It’s a really interesting contrast!