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July 3, 2019 by Travis Jonker

Cover Controversy: The Poet X

July 3, 2019 by Travis Jonker   2 comments

*UPDATE* HarperTeen released a statement on September 6, 2019 saying that The Poet X will now have a revised cover credit. It will include the photographer of the source image used.


The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo has had an incredible year. It’s been a New York Times bestseller. It’s won all the awards. Now the cover of the book is causing a stir.

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@EpicReads The artist you talked about in this article committed plagiarism. This is not his original drawing. It is a photo manipulation/traced sketch of my image. Of my face. Please discredit him. https://t.co/xnvJpvopNI pic.twitter.com/LDVg3E7iVj

— Amanda not Opal (@boricuatears) July 1, 2019

It appears that the cover image was plagiarized.

Appears? Make that WAS:

I learned how to animate this in photoshop just to make sure people could see how blatant this is. Like, wow. pic.twitter.com/QsR65qy7S3

— Catherine Slavova (@CSlavova) July 1, 2019

This is so disappointing/maddening/illegal. Now it’s in the hands of the publisher to determine a course of action.

I’m sure reimbursing the original artist is the first step. From there I wonder what will happen. A new cover?

Whatever action takes place, from a school librarian perspective, this situation is a good reminder:

Why do we need to talk to kids about plagiarism, giving credit to sources, & not taking images they find and passing off as their own? Because stuff like this happens.????#librarylife https://t.co/WeQ6CI5qyk

— Jillian Heise (@heisereads) July 2, 2019

Filed under: Articles, Cover Curiosity, Covers, News

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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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Comments

  1. Shadra Strickland says

    July 3, 2019 at 11:16 am

    Ouch. As a professor of illustration, we talk at length with our students about how to use reference responsibly. This cover is stunning, no doubt to the credit of the lovely “model”. Not sure what made this artist think that swiping a face online and altering it in photoshop would be okay. Shepard Fairey couldn’t get away with it. A model release form would have gone a long way in this instance.

  2. Pablo says

    July 9, 2019 at 1:08 pm

    The “artist” is named Gabriel Moreno: twitter.com/Gabriel_illo (He had retweeted the epicreads article that was taken down.) He’s made no response I can find.

    The cover is still up on his website: https://www.gabrielmorenostudio.com/#/projectx-cover-book/

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