Dueling Covers

I hardly ever (as in never) post two days in a row, but this was just too hard to pass up. Those of you who follow my other blog, The Year of Writing Dangerously, may have seen my recent post on judging a book by its cover. After reading a couple of yesterday's comments, which ranged from dislike to support for the cover of Stones forMy Father, I couldn't deprive you all of a comparison between the two covers available (and the Don's running a book on which one is going to garner the greater support.)

The cover on the left is the one for the book I read for the Cybils. I must admit I was not immediately attracted by the sepia tones, but there was something haunting about the young girl's eyes. I could also immediately glean from her clothing that this would be a story set in the early 20th century. I didn't immediately think "Africa," because I only scanned the animals on the cover, and thought they were deer, rather than springbok.

I saw the cover on the right when I googled the cover images, and I immediately thought "British." Further investigation shows me that I'm probably right--the image comes from a British woman's book review blog. I'm not sure why I thought it was from my country of origin. Is it the italic typeface for the title? You're left in no doubt this is set in Africa, with the big old obvious giraffe. But you would not immediately suspect the era is 1901--the girl's look and clothing is much more contemporary.

This sort of sleight of hand can sometimes be annoying. I remember thinking that the cover of Phoebe Snow's The Romeo and Juliet Code (which if you haven't yet read, you must) would be more contemporary, although it's set in the early 1940s.

My guess is that young people would be more likely to choose to read this book based on the greater vibrancy and more contemporary feel of the second (British) cover.

What do you guys think? If you have a youngster available, why don't you conduct an experiment and let me know their opinion?

Marvelous Middle Grade Monday: Stones For My Father

Stones For My Father by Trilby Kent (Tundra Books, 2011)

Another Cybils nominee, Stones for my Father, really got me hooked on historical fiction. It is set during the 2nd Anglo-Boer War in South Africa (1899-1902), and is written with a beautiful lyricism. Here are the opening lines:

My mother once told me of a dream she had as a young girl, in the days before the English came. She had dreamed of a child, a boy, with ruddy cheeks and blue eyes like my father's, and a gurgling laugh that could make even Oom Jakob smile.

I was not that child.

The narrator is Corlie Roux. Her beloved father is dead, and her mother dotes on Corlie's younger brothers while treating Corlie with cruelty. The family lives on a farm in the Transvaal, but their way of life crashes down around them with the British scorched earth policy. They have to flee their home, are captured, and placed in a concentration camp, where illness and death abound. A terrible secret is revealed, with devastating effect for Corlie. As it says on the dust jacket, "Will Corlie's resilience and devotion to her country sustain her through the suffering and squalor she finds in the camp at Kronstad? That may depend on a soldier from faraway Canada, and on inner resources Corlie never dreamed she had..."

Why I liked it : Stones for my Father is a compelling tale with high stakes for its resilient heroine. The land of the Transvaal is beautifully described. In fact, the language of this novel is dazzling throughout. This would be a great story for the upper middle grader, and has crossover appeal with the boys. Even though Corlie the narrator is a girl, there is plenty of military action. Guns are fired!

Pair this with Michaela MacColl's Promise the Night, and you have a unit of African historical fiction to study!

About the author: Trilby Kent is a Canadian who lives in London, England. You can find out more about her on the website Red Room.