An URGENT PLEA to Harper Collins: I love your list of upcoming releases from Harper Teen--big faves of the burgerfolk, like Maureen Johnson and Meg Cabot, are on there--but please, please, you MUST restrain the MAD CROPPER who's treating your cover models so brutally! The Cropper (perhaps kin to the Lopper from that old Seinfeld episode) must be stopped! Revoke his Photoshop license NOW, before he crops again!
Seriously, I totally agree with the smart reader quoted in a previous B-burger post who complained about the trend toward perfect and perfectly anonymous headless bods, which have been proliferating on covers across the YA world since the huge success of the Gossip Girls series....
Faces are FAB. Eyes are EXCELLENT. So lissenup, publishing people. Decapitation is so 2006. Heads are the new black. Let's make '07 the year we stop the crop.
yrs,
Covergirl
PS...I saw these covers in some pr material--and these titles are all coming up in spring or summer--so maybe these designs are just placeholders? if so, you, Mad Cropper, still have time to repent and mend your ways before these books hit the shelves...
It does seem a little... dehumanizing, doesn't it?
Posted by: Katie Alender | January 22, 2007 at 08:10 AM
couldn't agree more, Katie. and sort of weird, too...
Posted by: dj | January 23, 2007 at 05:48 PM
So funny you should blog about this! Recently on her blog, Ally Carter gave a few reasons for the head chopped covers. :)
Posted by: Kelly Parra | January 25, 2007 at 02:07 PM
I was just about to launch in about this. I was at a bookstore yesterday and counted 6 chopped off heads in the YA display. My degree in women's studies switched into hyper-drive. It's kind of a classic porn stance. Completely dehumanizing... hmmm. Why don't they decapitate the boys? Have they done that yet?
Posted by: Stasia | January 26, 2007 at 11:34 AM
While when you put a bunch of headcropped books together, it does make a bit of a disturbing image, I can totally understand why the heads are cropped. I don't think it's so much about removing the head as it is about removing the face - allowing the reader to construct an image of the main character in the head without any influence. By leaving the people on the cover faceless, you allow that. Sure, books with illustrated characters on the cover don't usually crop the heads, but I never found that influencing my vision of the character as I read. Books with photos of people on the cover look fresh and hip - granted, down the road, depending on the clothing, they will look dated - and they sell!
Posted by: jenn | January 27, 2007 at 09:14 AM