Like dating, designing the right cover for a book can be a long, arduous process. Sometimes a cover gives off the wrong impression. Sometimes it’s too showy, sometimes it’s too dull. Sometimes a cover says all the right things, but lacks sincerity.
But sometimes, you find The One. And you just know.
That was the case with the cover of Summer of the Mariposas, coming this fall from our Tu Books imprint. Summer of the Mariposas, by Guadalupe Garcia McCall, is a YA retelling of The Odyssey set in Mexico. It follows Odilia and her sisters on their quest to return a dead man to his family (you can read an excerpt of the book here).
Because Guadalupe Garcia McCall is such a gorgeous writer (her first novel, Under the Mesquite, won the Pura Belpré Award and was a Morris Award Finalist) we wanted to find a gorgeous cover that would do justice to her work. Based on suggestions from the editor, Stacy Whitman, and Guadalupe herself, the designer came back with seven or eight different covers to start with. But when we saw this one, we knew it was perfect:
This cover is filled with small details that really capture the feeling of the story – the symbol in the sky, five stars for five sisters, the fantasy elements grounded by a very real-looking road. And yesterday the first ARCs came in, so now we can see what they look like in real life:
What do you think?
(Note: if you’ll be at ALA, we’ll be doing an ARC signing with Guadalupe Garcia McCall herself on Sunday morning at 10AM in booth #2436!)
