Gallery: Debut YA Covers
Huzzah to the brave souls who boldly assembled their debut YA book covers (click here to give it a try). Below is a gallery of the sometimes outstanding, sometimes outstandingly unfortunate results.
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Break @ Words on Words by Maggie Stiefvater (author of the recently released Shiver)
Strum @ Pop Candy.
Signal @ princessdeia.
Bluster @ Divinest Sense.
Click @ It Came From Outer Space.
Overdressing @ Bellas Novella.
Believe @ Reading at the Beach.
Time and Promise @ The Queen Bees Book Club.
Find @ Willing to See Less.
Bow @ Cosy Catastrophe.
Name @ willmetz.
Untwisted @ Penryn’s Dreams.
Air and Afraid @ Throwing Away Breadcrumbs.
Jog @ Bookatopia.
End @ Paperback Pirate.
Gauge @ Libbie on the Label.
Focus @ Booth & Dimock Teen Spot.
Barrage @ Nothing Rhymes with Rachel.
Stump @ A Fuse #8 Production. Eco-themed YA coming up.
Unwrap @ Libri Dilectio.
Badmouth @ Bleatbox.
Rub @ Today’s Adventure.
Peep @ Sunshine Edition.
Lure and Loiter @ Hey! Teenager of the Year.
Enlighten, Vomit, Stand, and Spot @ In the Booley House.
Enlighten and Haul @ Morike of the Chair.
Reward @ transientme.
Betray @ Teacherninja.
Vault @ The YA YA YAs.
Beat @ Half Asleep in Paisley Pajamas.
Elevate @ Lady Lazarus.
Sigh, Humour, and Reach @ Gignacery.
Return @ Calliope and Thalia’s Modern Day Musings.
Shelter and Wrangle @ Alien Onion.
Bathe @ Moored at Sea.
Drape @ The Zen Leaf.
Crumple @ BookEnds.
Sober @ The Infinite Shelf.
Slump @ The Summer.
Embrace (two versions) @ Oops…Wrong Cookie. Man, I couldn’t just see these possibly being on shelves – they should be.
Vote @ bookbrig.
Thrash @ Blog Was Star.
Slide @ Mt. Lebanon Public Library.
Slumber @ Mt. Lebanon Public Library.
Dissemble @ Romantoes.
Conspire @ C.K. Kelly Martin.
Mollycoddle @ Layers of Thought.
Jumble @ Nan’s Corner of the World.
Pitch @ The Vintage Reader.
Adore @ Life on the Bookshelf.
Cartwheel @ Life on the Bookshelf.
Express @ Linz.
Surprise @ this cat! it is not a cheesecake!
Conclude @ Mrs. McGrew’s Blog.
Manipulate @ Bookworm Buddies.
Flip @ I Read, I Write, I Shelve Things.
Stray and Frozen @ I Read, I Write, I Shelve Things.
Liar @ LibrariYAn. Alicia took the recently controversial-for-it’s-cover YA novel Liar and put it through the Create Your Debut YA Cover steps. A vastly different result.
Sip @ LibrariYAn.
Keep @ Stray Kitten. This one’s pretty smooth. The first of a few of these that I could see actually working in the real world.
Yank @ Diana Peterfreund. Another one that I could envision on shelves. Where is the third hand coming from? Someone write a story for this ASAP.
Reminisce @ Diana Peterfreund. This character is sad. An kind of mad about it.
Huff @ Underage Reading. I think I saw this one on shelves back in the 80s.
Pluck @ Tanita S. Davis blog. Aww, yeah. I was just thinking the other day that eyebrow plucking has not been the basis for enough books. This one fills a much needed gap.
Tense @ YABOOKNERD. A YA book about rock wall climbing ? Belay on!
Centre @ Wish I Were Baking. “Look, look – I know the cover isn’t jumping out at you, but you just have to read it, man. So good.”
Kick! @ Book Nut. I think I know about 53 cheerleaders in the making who would grab this as soon as it hit the shelves.
Crow @ Anna Jarzab. Wow – ghost child makes for YA gold.
Claim @ NBPL Teen Book Blog. Final line: “Just go out there and claim your life, dude.”
Guzzle @ Shalan. Ha –
Scorn @ ALD Youth Services Interest Group. I dare you to pick this one up.
Whisk @ Abby (the) Librarian. This could go the happy/funny route or veer toward the quirky/dark end of the spectrum.
Wonder @ Emily’s Reading Room. I would venture to say that this one might work in real life.
Sabotage! @ One Librarian’s Book Reviews. Bringin’ the gunplay that youngsters can’t get enough of.
Elude @ Holly’s Red Bike. A good ol’ fashioned chase story.
Stuff @ The Reading Zone. Pushing the envelope.
Still @ CMIS.
Cleave @ Finding Wonderland.
Plunge @ Maples and Fiddleheads.
Bend @ Spinning Jennie.
Showcase @ The Further Adventures of Seagull Boy.
Arch @ Under the Covers.
Pluck @ The Magic of Ink.
Yawn. This one’s mine.
Filed under: Articles
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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Some of those are actually amazingly beautiful. And I’m stunned by how “Still” looks like a lot of books on my shelf. Just crop off three-quarter’s of the girl’s face and we’d have a real YA cover!
Thanks for organizing this; it was great fun.
Yeah, some of these turned out well. And the ones that didn’t came out wonderfully bad. A good balance.
What fun! Here’s mine.
Mine turned out surprisingly good. 😀
Excellent!! Some of these are extremely plausible, which is frightening. I like Stump and Bend an awful lot.
Here’s mine! Fun stuff!
http://oopswrongcookie.blogspot.com/2009/07/create-your-ya-cover.html
here’s mine!
http://thesummer.wordpress.com/2009/07/29/create-a-ya-cover/
hahaha understandable. I felt a little uncomfortable with it as well. I added another one. same link as above.
Added!
Hey! Thanks for adding mine. I’m going to link to this post on my blog.
If you’re looking for more, my three boys put theirs up, too: http://gignacery.blogspot.com/2009/07/book-covers-from-boys.html
Mine! All four of them!
http://thebooleyhouse.wordpress.com/2009/07/30/create-your-own-debut-ya-book-cover/
Here’s mine!
http://www.mechanicalcat.net/rachel/log/Silly%20Fun/Faux_b_b_b_book
Check out mine !
http://sunshineedition.blogspot.com/2009/07/create-ya-cover.html
Thanks 🙂
This is fantastic! I’d love to see these on the shelf in our Teen section. (Although, I’d like to add a small caption to the one with the chihuahua coming from the dog that says, “Madam, I protest!”)
I can’t believe how good most of them turned out! Here’s mine:
http://paperbackpirate.blogspot.com/2009/07/i-wrote-my-first-book.html
I have a YA as well as an SF&F up on my livejournal.
Love these! 😀
http://penrynsdreams.livejournal.com/125163.html
This was a lot of fun!!
http://www.bellasnovella.com/2009/08/create-your-debut-ya-cover.html
That was a lot of fun, here’s mine: http://img222.imageshack.us/gal.php?g=badmouthcover.jpg
Some of those covers are really great, better than many published jackets!
Sorry, wasn’t quite the right link!
Here: http://img222.imageshack.us/img222/9806/badmouthcover.jpg
So glad you did a round-up of the covers. I hadn’t seen many of them – and there were some great ones. I’d totally read Crumple, Gauge, and Wonder. And Stand and Spot must be on shelves already – they look so real.
I agree – some of these turned out eerily plausible. Crumple and Embrace seem especially “torn from the shelf” to me.
Wow, some of these are just incredibly well done! Mine isn’t so good, but here it is anyway: http://willmetz.com/images/ya-cover.jpg
Some of these are really great. Mine definitely doesn’t look like something I’d pick up at the bookstore: http://ultimatebookhound.blogspot.com/2009/08/create-your-debut-ya-novel-cover.html
Those are so fantastic.
Here’s mine: Unbuckle by Anita Cheek.
Love this! DIY covers. My YA debut is titled ‘Balance’ – your typical, tense ‘coming of age’ type YA. You can have a laugh at it over on my blog: http://wellreadrabbit.wordpress.com
I couldn’t help but jump on the Fake YA Book Cover bandwagon:
http://www.scottking.info/blog/2009/08/20/fake-ya-book-cover/
Okay, it was totally ridiculous for me to do this, as I already have not only a debut novel out but another novel on the NYT list and another one coming out in October, but it was too fun not to do it. Here it is: http://m-stiefvater.livejournal.com/124990.html.
I’m honored you have taken part! I added your cover to the gallery.
Thanks! 😀
oh my i found this late..
Come check out mine!
http://whenitrainsonme.blogspot.com/2009/12/omg-my-debut-ya-book.html
Here are mine…
http://twilightdew.tumblr.com/post/2503969508/create-your-debut-ya-cover-my-results