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April 8, 2009 by Travis Jonker

Cover Controversy: CO IN CI DENCE

April 8, 2009 by Travis Jonker   3 comments

No doubt influenced by the JabbaWockeeZ meteoric rise to hip-hop dance crew fame (I’m kidding) (sort of), children’s and YA book covers are seeking to pop and lock their way into readers hands by taking long words, capitalizing the letters, maxing out the font size, and breaking them into chunks. Lovers of phonics everywhere are calling this technique MAG  NI  FI  CENT!

First, the inspiration:

SCROLL TO KEEP READING THIS POST

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jabbawockeez-shirts

And now the covers:

zorgcov1

Zorgamazoo by Robert Paul Weston.

castcov

Castration Celebration by Jake Wizner. Yes, this is actually the title (Thanks to the blog Pinot and Prose for bringing this one to my attention).

Side by side:

zorgcov1castcov

A resemblance?

For the uninitiated, a JabbaWockeeZ video:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TUdyv_0nFo]

Filed under: Cover Curiosity

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About Travis Jonker

Travis Jonker is an elementary school librarian in Michigan. He writes reviews (and the occasional article or two) for School Library Journal and is a member of the 2014 Caldecott committee. You can email Travis at scopenotes@gmail.com, or follow him on Twitter: @100scopenotes.

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. wayofthewest says

    May 27, 2009 at 2:41 pm

    A friend forwarded me this link and I must say I never thought I’d be compared to a book with the word castration in the title. Hilarious.

Trackbacks

  1. Zorgamazoo vs. Castration Celebration « Way of the West says:
    June 2, 2009 at 10:05 am

    […] he noticed a bias toward CAP IT TAL IZ ING titles and breaking up the syllables. He jokingly blames hip-hop crew Jabbawokeez for the […]

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