♥ Please share your love for the best YA cover artists ♥

Hi - I thought it might be nice to start a thread on which we can share our love for cover artists whose work makes you want to buy the book, regardless of what it is about! (Hopefully I am not the only one guilty of buying a book based on the gorgeous cover alone???) I thought we could include pictures of the cover art in the thread so people can see what it is we love so much about them. If you don't know how to include cover images in your posts, there is some advice in this thread: http://www.librarything.com/topic/35356

Now, I will start with some of my favourites!

♥ Jason Chan ♥

I think I love all his work - It was ages before I realised he did all the covers on a bunch of books I bought based on the art alone - any author who snags him as a cover artist is very lucky!

Here are some of his gorgeous covers:



Edited to add touchstones:

So Silver Bright by Lisa Mantchev
Thief's Covenant by Ari Marmell
The Princess Curse by Merrie Haskell
Winterling by Sarah Prineas
The Kneebone Boy by Ellen Potter

♥ Cliff Nielsen ♥

Cliff Nielsen does some fantastic fantasy covers, several of which I am sure you will recognise:



Touchstones:
Ice by Sarah Beth Durst
Lots of Cassandra Clare's books, such as Clockwork Angel
N. K. Jemisin's Inheritance Trilogy, e.g. The Kingdom of Gods
Goblin Gate by Hilari Bell
That cool Barnes & Noble cover of Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis

♥ Elise Hurst ♥

Thought I would add in one from Australia - our books are super expensive, and often only ever come out in flimsy paperbacks, but sometimes we get awesome art that for some reason doesn't ever make it off-shore. How utterly fabulous is this set that actually goes together to make a gorgeous triptych for the Moorhawke series?



Touchstones:
The Poison Throne by Celine Kiernan
The Crowded Shadows by Celine Kiernan
The Rebel Prince by Celine Kiernan

I'd love to see what covers take your breath away too! (And I have more of my favourites to share if anyone wants to see them, but don't want to be a thread hog, so will stop now and wait to see if it's a topic of interest to a broader audience than just me...)

I'm definitely biased by the fact that this is one of my favorite books, one that I love with all my heart, One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia, but anyway....

The first image is to the hardcover dust jacket; the second is to the paperback. I was so-o-o enthralled by the first, the hardcover picture, until I saw the second,the paperback picture, which I love even more:

.....

Also, The Mighty Miss Malone, with that look on Deza Malone's face:



ETA: These might be more in the middle-grade reader than the YA level, but they're certainly every bit as advanced as Narnia.

^5 CurrerBell, funny, I've recently read both books, and love the covers. In fact, I added the paperback of One Crazy Summer to my "favorite covers" book even before I'd read it!

5>> Ooooh, I knew there was an on-line post about the One Crazy Summer hardcover art work. In fact that, whole blogspot JacketKnack seems to be about cover art -- again, more children's I think, than YA.

I really love the cover art to Imaginary Girls by Nova Ren Suma:


I just looked up the artist, Elena Kalis's other photos and they are amazing.

>4 skullduggery: Wow, I love those covers! I actually have the 1st book in that series (which I haven't read yet) and I thought the American cover was adequate, but those black and white covers make me want to push that book to the top of my queue!

You can really see everyone's individual style when they list their covers. Mine fall into a couple of categories:

I am a total sucker for wings (YA and not). I haven't read a good one yet, but they still get me every time:


Girls with swords. These are always good (one is not YA but fits with the theme):
(bonus for dragon!)

And you'll notice my love of silhouettes in this one and several of the above as well:


I love covers and hate when a great book has a bad or inappropriate one.

Touchstones:
Halo
Hush, Hush

The Woman Who Rides Like A Man
Lioness Rampant
Privilege of the Sword
Graceling
Bitterblue
Eon

The China Garden

It seems like more books have bad cover art than good. Or maybe I'm just picky. Anyway, here are some I like:

The covers of the Fablehaven series, Incarceron, Into the Land of Unicorns (this might be more children's than YA), House of Many Ways, Carpe Diem, The Hero and the Crown


I like photo-manipulated covers, but only when their done well. Which they often aren't. However, the same can be said for the painted covers.

I love the illustrations in Leviathan by Keith Thompson. After reading the book I went and looked at his website. The unfortunate thing is that they didn't have him do the covers for the American version. I think it's the British version that has his art on the cover? I'm not sure. Anyway, compare the two:



The second has his art, I don't know who came up with the first. Here's a link to a larger version of the artwork he did for the cover - http://www.keiththompsonart.com/pages/alekandstormwalker.html

megan turnerhttp://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/P/0060835796.01._SX140_SY224_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

Thanks for sharing all!

>5 CurrerBell: Yes, I like both of the One Crazy Summer covers as well. I have the paperback, which is by Frank Morrison.

>8 weener: Thanks for sharing the link to Elena's website - her photos are amazing! Did you see some of her photos are also on some of 'The Ingo Chronicles' by Helen Dunmore? Not quite as arresting as her Imaginary Girls cover but perhaps more pretty.



>9 macsbrains: I really laughed at your angel cover comment - I totally have a bunch of these too where I love the covers but was not so enamoured of the contents! Always a sucker for wings and girls with swords (and, er, dragons)... Have you seen the British Seven Kingdoms covers by Kelly Eismann? I actually like them more than the US ones:



>10 pwaites: Oh, yes - the Incarceron and Sapphique covers are just gorgeous! They are designed by Sammy Yuen Jr - who, coincidentally enough, is also the designer of the the US Leviathan cover you mentioned later in your post. I hadn't seen the Keith Thompson covers before, really nice - I also prefer the British covers to the American covers (although the *first* US cover Sammy Yuen did for Leviathan which is the one I have was lovely - I think they totally ruined them when they added in the people photos though). He also did covers for the Horsemen of the Apocalypse series by Jackie Morse Kessler and the Tithe series by Holly Black, both of which I like heaps as well. And he is apparently also the designer of the Wake series by Lisa McMann although I'm afraid I don't care as much for those covers.



Touchstones
Stormswept by Helen Dunmore
Graceling, Fire and Bitterblue by Kristin Cashore
Hunger by Jackie Morse Kessler
Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld
Ironside by Holly Black
Fade by Lisa McMann

>10 pwaites: Just adding in an in-thread link to the cover art you mentioned

Megan Whelan Turner's The King of Attolia and the rest of The Queen's Thief series:



I really liked the later covers in this series too - I spent forever trying to track down the matching covers for the first two hardbacks in the series until I discovered they were never released (sigh).

> @Skullduggery

I have several more winged people covers in my library that are not YA. I can't help myself.

The Seven Kingdom covers you posted with the weapons are the ones I have in my library. I prefer the silhouetted covers though.

Another thing I love are cityscapes (this is probably related to my fascination with silhouettes).


I'm not super fond of the color of City of Ashes, but I'm from Brooklyn so the Bridge gets me.

> @pwaites

I LOVE that cover for The Hero and the Crown I can't believe I forgot to include it in my girls-with-swords-(and-dragons) group! It's probably because I don't have that cover for my copy, I have a sucky one instead. It is a crime against nature for that book to have a boring cover. A CRIME!

Let's compare:

Great cover: This is epic.
Great cover: This is EPIC.
Boring cover: Well, at least it has a dragon and a sword on it.
WTH IS THIS?: I can't even.

I have the second one. Love it. The last one looks, for some reason, like it belongs on a bio of Alexander the Great.

>14 macsbrains: @MerryMary

After you said that I searched google for Alexander the Great and Horse and I got this:

Coincidence? I think you've got a sharp eye.

And a magpie's nest of useless facts for a memory.

Although, I am killer at Trivial Pursuit.

>14 macsbrains: lol, you guys are too funny!

The really tragic thing is that someone has done a whole bunch of these covers so you could in fact get a whole *matching set* of the Alexander-the-Great-biography-esque set of Robin McKinley's books.

For The Blue Sword we have

OR...

Spindle's End has:

OR...

And for Deerskin we have:

OR...

Just Too Awful.

>18 skullduggery: *weeps* WHY?!

I don't even know what that is on the cover of the Alexander-the-Great-Biography version of Spindle's End. Are those flowers? Because it kind of looks like there's a foot in them.

Maybe they were trying to age them up a bit so they don't look YA? Ancient Greek horse sculptures are so much more refined than a great dragon hurling its breath and setting a girl on fire (even if that's what actually happens.)

I can't say much for this cover of Rose Daughter either:


But on the other hand we have this beautiful one for Pegasus: Hello, wings... in silhouette... *heart*

I just joined this group and just started reading YA fiction. Okay, technically I am re-reading YA fiction as I am now 28 and am re-reading some Christoper Pike and R.L. Stine Fear Streets.

That said, a coworker and I were discussing this week the intriguing covers of the Fear Street series (the original covers). I love them! They are so hokey but completely captivated me as a young teen. Even looking at them now revives the twinkle in my eye from when I was younger. Here are some of my favorites:

21>> OMG! That first one you posted there, Cheerleaders: The First Evil, so absolutely reminds me of a young Meg Foster that I had to check and make sure she never made a movie of that one.

I've been reading a lot of books lately that use photography like:




By the way, does anyone know how to make the pictures smaller?? Mine are kind of huge XD

Here's the HTML code:

<img src="http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1322103400l/10507293.jpg" width="78" height="119">

Do you know HTML, Danielle? You seem to know enough to have been able to snag an image from goodreads (unless LT has some point-and-click way of doing so that you used without knowing the HTML). If you do know some HTML, then what you need to do to adjust the size of the image is to enter appropriate width and height attributes in the img tag. By "appropriate" I mean ones that are proportional to the width and height dimensions of the original src JPG file.

The original JPG file for Selection has a width of 314 pixels and a height of 475 pixels. The way I knew that was, I saved the file to my desktop and then moused over it, which gave me a tooltip that included the dimensions (along with some other data). Then I divided proportionately, in this case, by four. Be careful to maintain the correct proportions, though, because if you divide the width by four but the height by, say, two you'll get something like this {urk}:



Here's the code for that distorted image, and you can see the disproportion between height and width relative to the dimensions of the original:

<img src="http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1322103400l/10507293.jpg" width="78" height="238">

Also, NEVER use this technique to ENLARGE an image! That's going to cause pixelation.

The technique I gave you really isn't a good one. Preferably, you should use some photo editor (PhotoStop, PhotoShop Elements, the free and open-source GIMP, or whatever) to make a proportional adjustment in the size of the image and then re-save the file. Although I gave you a method that works, it's wasteful of bandwidth because the original file is still 314 pixels wide and of 475 pixels high; it's only the appearance on the page that you're changing. If you don't have access to or know how to use such a photo editor, though, this is a way to change proportions on-the-fly.

Look, I happen to know HTML (and CSS, JavaScript, and PHP). If you have to ask, then it might be a little risky for you. On the other hand, if you just know how to use PhotoShop or some other editor, then you could save the image from goodreads, adjust the dimensions in PhotoShop, upload a re-sized original to the book's LT page, and then link to the file from there.

And incidentally, the way I found that you linked to the images from goodreads was by right-clicking the page and then clicking on "View page source" in the pop-up menu, which gave me the source HTML code for the web page of this entire thread.

What I did is really simple if you know some web coding (or, alternatively, can adjust your image size in a photo editor). Otherwise, you'll just have to be satisfied with whatever the original dimensions might be of an image that you've linked to.

Alternatively, LT itself may have some point-and-click technique that allows you to adjust the size of the source image and you don't have to do it the "hard" way like I did. Maybe someone else has some information on that.

>23 Danielle.Montgomery: Ooh, the ruffles make me think of snowflakes :)

24>> Thanks for all the info! I usually just right click the image from goodreads and get the html from the "view page source" then I img src="blah blah, etc. etc. but I didn't know how to resize the images on screen so now I can post pictures without them being overly obnoxiously big! Woohoo!

25>> Yes isn't her dress so pretty?? I wonder how much that thing weights lol

I actually had a discussion with Robin McKinley about some of the terrible cover art on her books, because the cover of my edition of Beauty, which I'd brought in to have her sign when she was in town touring for Sunshine, is hideous. She asked if I'd ever thought about getting one with a different cover.

But, it was personally handed to me in a bookstore by my 10th grade English teacher, who was one of my favorite teachers ever, and I can never get rid of it. Ms. McKinley did concede that was a good reason to not buy a replacement. So now I definitely can't get rid of it, since she told me to keep it.

>27 megaelim: That's a cute story :) I'm sentimental about my books too and once I read it I can't trade it for a different version either because part of my reading experience is the visual cover and the tactile feel of the weight of the book. If I get a new version then it's not the one I associate with all the good feelings. I have to work all that stuff out before or it's too late (and I never end up doing so.)

I don't really like this cover, but it's my long-time favorite book and wouldn't trade it for the world:
The Last April Dancers

Also, tastes change. Sometimes you see a book as a kid and pick it up and think, "Wow, this cover is so awesome, it has a boy on a flying space pony!"
(cf: ) But then when you're an adult and you think about the thick bright turquoise imprint border and the weird disembodied facial outlines in boxes, you might not be as enamored by it. If I saw it in the store now, I don't know if I'd....

...No, who am I kidding? It's a boy on a flying space pony! I would still buy it on sight.

Back on the topic of covers we like, as I was going through my own catalog these are some that stood out: (grouped by theme)

Atmosphere:


Mist & guys in top hats:


I really like the design and colors on this one:

27>>Megaelim, that is definitely a good reason to not get another cover edition of it. But now you'll have a lovely story to tell along with the ugly cover lol

12>> Skullduggery, I think the Graceling Realm book covers are absolutely beautiful too. They're so artistic!

This may be slightly off-topic but has anyone else almost missed finding a favorite book because the cover was so awful. This happened to me withThe Demon's Lexicon. It looked too much like just another "ooooh, my knees go weak when I look at him" teen romance. Not that I'm against teen romances in general. I just like something a little less like a Harlequin Romance.

I'm with SkullD and Danielle (>>12 skullduggery:, 30), I really like the Graceling, Fire, and Bitterblue covers.

^31, I actually had a tag for "ugliest covers" in my library, but then I felt bad, like I might be hurting an artist's feelings if they ever came across it, so I changed the tag name to a code that only I will understand.

I did once pick up a book that had a hideous cover, but only because the title was so intriguing to me: Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes. Reading that book turned me into a complete Chris Crutcher fan!

I love all the covers for Cassandra Clare's novels but I think this new cover for Clockwork Princess is extra super beautiful!

>34 Danielle.Montgomery: Yes, that one is gorgeous!

It is seriously amazing what computers can do with art these days. So beautiful!

How about these lovely Hex Hall covers? These are creative!

, ,

^Lovely! I do like it when series covers carry a theme through but still look different enough from each other.

Good series too, Danielle. I've still got to get around to finishing it up with Spell Bound. I've got it, but I've been tied up this past month with ALL VIRAGO/ALL AUGUST.

amysisson: I love when a series follows the same theme too!! It just makes the stories gel better for me.

CurrerBell: I read some reviews on Spell Bound that was quite unflattering but I'm keeping my hopes up as I've already requested it from my library, lol. Hopefully I'll love it just as much as the first one.

Adam S. Doyle has some of the most beautiful cover art I've seen in a while. I own a hardcover copy of The Scorpio Races, but I might have to splurge on a paperback as well, because it's so lovely.

Have you seen those Penguin Classics Deluxe edition covers? They are reissuing classic books with covers designed by awesome artists. Here's a few:

45> Pearl (the baby) is kind of creepy looking, but I love the cover for Pride & Prejudice.

Wasn't Pearl kind of an impish baby anyway?

@jnwelch: I love the covers for the Lunar Chronicles. The font, the colors, everything is perfect. It doesn't hurt that they're accompanied by great stories. I'm currently reading Scarlet and I'm loving it so far.

I also have to give some love to whomever designed the cover art for Seraphina. The look of a wood cut is perfect for a story taking place in a Medieval-esque setting.

Yes! I love the cover of Seraphina. The muted colors are perfect, and the drawing is so beautiful.

>42 jnwelch: yes, those covers for the lunar chronicles are really striking - I loved that font, both on the cover and inside the book.
>44 Cailiosa: Ha, I bought a copy of The Raven Boys just for that cover! (I didn't like the Shiver series all that much (I know, blasphemy!), but I was really glad to have tried again with Raven Boys - I loved it.)
>45 weener: Penguin have been coming out with some great revived covers recently - the set you posted were designed by Ruben Toledo, who is actually a fashion illustrator. My favourite is that creepy Jane Eyre...
>48 Cailiosa: Andrew Davidson did that beautiful Seraphina wood-cut illustration (trivia for the day - apparently he also did some of the designs on the doors at Wimbledon's Centre Court.)

I also love some of the next textual cover designs that are around at the moment, e.g. Shadow and Bone (cover by Jen Wang) and Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (I don't have a copy yet, so not sure of the artist, but isn't it gorgeously atmospheric? Hope the story lives up to it...):

I'm so glad I found this thread! Great cover art is the difference between me buying or not buying a book.

I'm particularly find of bright, bold covers, and hand drawings.

Here are some I've enjoyed recently:

@pwaites and @skillduggery: Have you all seen the new hardcover edition for Seraphina. I guess after it won the Morris, booksellers started running out of the original hardcover, so they released this one:



I love the new color palette and the 'S' on Seraphina (even though it kind of brings to mind Trogdor from Homestar Runner).

Oh, and I don't consider it blasphemous at all to not like the Shiver trilogy, as I didn't care for it at all, really. I clicked with Maggie Stiefvater as an author after reading The Scorpio Races and I adored The Raven Boys. She's quickly becoming one of those authors whose books I will buy without question.

>53 Cailiosa: I also prefer the more different kind of S.

Not a fan of the colorization though because it obscures some of the details of the drawing.

>52 UnrulySun: I haven't heard of most of those (not really up on the mid-grade stuff) but now I really want to read about these incorrigible children because that cover makes me laugh!

54> The "Incorrigible Children" series has been described as Jane Eyre meets Lemony Snicket. You should be able to tell from my LT name what I think of Jane Eyre, though I don't particularly care for Lemony Snicket, but I like the "Incorrigible Children" series and am planning to get new installments as soon as they come out. I just hope Maryrose Wood doesn't let the series run on forever and forever and wear out her welcome the way Lemony Snicket did (at least for me).

ETA: Make sure, of course, that you read the current series installments in order.

55> But there HAD to be 13 books in the Lemony Snicket series. LOL

56> But actually, there was a (very short) fourteenth book! { gotcha ;-) }

57> Are you referring to Lemony Snicket: The Unauthorized Autobiography or The Beatrice Letters? Those don't count because they're not about those poor, unfortunate, *sniff* Baudelaire orphans.

58> No, I mean at the end of the thirteenth physical book, isn't there a "Book Fourteen"? That runs just for a few pages? That's supposed to be the "heavenly(?) ever after" or whatever that those three *sniff* little dears are heading into? I kind of remember something about that, but I can't check it out because I gave my set away to a young woman at church who teaches sixth grade.

Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake

Artist: Nekro -- http://www.nekro.es/

59> OK, you got me curious. Thank God for ebooks - Wow, never thought I'd hear myself say that! There's a Chapter 14 at the end of The End. The poor little darlings *sniff* are leaving the safety of the island to head back to the real world.