Judging a Book....Eve Ainsworth

I have always been a bit fussy when it comes to books. It goes without saying that I have to love the concept and in a lot of cases I'm swayed by recommendations. But what can often make me decide to pick up a book in the first place is the cover. If it is striking, if it grabs my attention - I very often want it, or at least want to know more about it.


So it goes without saying that I was delighted when Scholastic sent me the design for Seven Days. I immediately loved its bright, bold statement and the fact that words, spiteful words from my text, were plastered across it. It represents bullying so well for me. It's a big, bold statement. I was confident that this cover could have impact.

I guess I'd worried a lot about the cover. I really wanted to love it, so it was such a relief to see it. I just wanted to hug the designer behind it (in fact I did at the Scholastic party...!)

It got me thinking just how important cover design can be, and how authors could be blessed or cursed with a cover that they do not like, or do not feel reflects their story.

With this in mind, I spoke to a few authors about their favourite covers and asked what it was about them that made them stand out.

What were their cover stories?

Helen Grant - Urban Legends (Random House)

" I was very pleased this cover because it shows a female (dead?) body but in such a way that it appears almost abstract; you can only see one eye and the line of the face runs diagonally across the cover. I thought that was quite stylish."

    Keren David selected Salvage (Atom Books)

  " I love both the published versions of Salvage. They are very different, but still have lots of impact."

Hilary Freeman selected The Camden Town Tales (Piccadilly Press)

"I love all my Camden Town Tales covers. I think that they appeal to the readership because they are pretty and perfectly targeted."  

Emma Haughton  selected Now You See Me (Usbourne)

'I love this cover because it's so simple, and yet so striking, And that gorgeous zingy green!'

Sheena Wilkinson selected Still Falling (Little Island)

"What I loved was the feel of the cover. I couldn't in a million years have said what I wanted but when I saw what the designer had done I just thought, yeah, that's it. I wanted the book to have a sexy grown up feel which I think it does. My last books all featured horses and I really wanted this one to feel like a departure which it does. "

Caroline Green  selected Hold Your Breath (Piccadilly Press)

"I loved the metallic look that gave it an underwater feel. And the colours are gorgeous."

It's fascinating looking at different front covers and wondering what the author felt about each one. I guess when an area such as design is taken out of their hands, it's even more important that it works, that they connect to it.

What front covers do you especially like? Have you ever picked up a book initially because of the design?

I know I have...

Eve x

Let Books be Books by Keren David

Beautiful Girls...Brilliant boys? 

I'm on deadline, so this post will be brief. In fact I'm over deadline, and I've reached the gibbering stage of madness where words and storylines are swirling around my head in such a bewildering fashion that I despair of catching them all. 
So, let me quickly commend the Let Books Be Books campaign to you and urge you to sign the petition, which calls for children's publishers to take 'Boys' and 'Girls' labels off colouring, activity and sticker books.
As the campaign says: 'Children are listening, and take seriously the messages they receive from books, from toys, from marketing and the adults around them. Do we really want them to believe that certain things are off-limits for them because of their gender? They’re not ‘getting it wrong’ if a girl likes robots, or if a boy wants to doodle flowers. These artificial boundaries turn children away from their true preferences, and provide a fertile ground for bullying.'
I'd go further and ask that publishers think carefully about all the books they publish for children of all ages and ask if gender specific  covers are really necessary.  Too often the message goes out to children that books about girls are off limit to boys, and vice versa. That adventure and action is for boys, and relationships are for girls. That a 'pink' book written by a woman is somehow not serious. 
The book that I'm struggling to finish is about love. It's about love from a boy and a girl's point of view. It's also about expectations and freedom, including the freedom to love who you want.  My hope is that it'll appeal to all sorts of readers, and I have great confidence that my publisher will  market it accordingly.
 Do you feel that marking books for 'girls' or 'boys' helps to write and sell them? Is it inevitable? Or can this campaign just be the start of real change in the world of children's books? 

Covering Up: Same Characters, New Pictures

Don’t judge a book by its cover.

Writers know this only too well – after all, we have little say on what goes on the covers of our books. Publishers know that covers are far too important to take much heed of writers. (Rightly so, in my case. I have little visual sense at all.) Publishers take covers seriously, because readers do. This is clear from the children I meet in schools. They are absolutely up front that they will read a book – or not – based on what they see on the cover.

Sometimes I show them a series of different covers and ask which they would read. The responses are unambiguously for or against. I then reveal that the covers all belong to different editions of my book Jessica Haggerthwaite: Witch Dispatcher. Huge surprise! How can the same story be presented in such different ways?

It’s fascinating to me, too. As I have admitted, I am not visual. New paint, new clothes or new garden plants are all a challenge to me (and probably to those viewing the results). When I first wrote Jessica Haggerthwaite, it was my editor who suggested I might like to mention what Jessica looked like. I had to stop and think. What did she look like? I knew lots of things about her, but not that.

So seeing my characters brought to life by an artist has been endlessly fascinating. While a more strongly visual writer might feel a clash with their own imaginings, I’m always intrigued to see how each artist brings out a slightly different aspect of the book.



The first cover artist, for the original Bloomsbury hardback and paperback, was Tim Archbold. As numerous children I have met since have pointed out, there is undoubtedly a touch of Quentin Blake in the squiggly, eccentric style of drawing that Archbold favours. It suits the eccentric nature of Jessica and her family extremely well. And a lot of the foreign editions went for slightly different versions of the Archbold cover.


In the German translation, what I love most is how determined Jessica appears. I also like the prominence given to the tomatoes – a key element of the plot. I won’t tell you why.


The Dutch version is probably my least-favourite: however, as the book has done extremely well in the Netherlands, I shouldn’t really complain!




Last September Jessica Haggerthwaite: Witch Dispatcher was re-issued in the UK by a new publisher, Strident, with a completely new cover by Emma Chichester Clark, the well-known creator of classic Blue Kangaroo. I love the results. The way the foliage arch frames the cover. Jessica is sweeter-looking, somehow, than the other versions, and more thoughtful – but still exasperated with her mother, as you can tell by her expression. Mrs Haggerthwaite looks suitably dippy. And there is a likeness between mother and daughter – which is completely true of their personalities, even if they have completely opposite views. It’s also beautiful without being “girly” – and this is definitely not a “girly” book.

To me, this is a slightly “retro” looking cover – bringing out the more old-fashioned elements of what is essentially a family story. Yet other readers have told me that Jessica reminds them of a “manga” character – an association I would never had picked out myself.

Manga character?

Which book covers do you love? And which books do you feel have suffered from the “wrong” cover?

Emma's Barnes's web-site
Emma's latest books are How (Not) To Make Bad Children Good and Jessica Haggerthwaite: Witch Dispatcher