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The Legend of Snarky Hollow
August 22nd, 2008
There's been plenty of talk about the "headless" trend in kids'/YA book covers, but I've never seen a post quite so snarky as Peter's at Collecting Children's Books. On How to Build a House, by Dana Reinhardt:
A group of teenagers converge on a small Tennesse town to rebuild a house that was destroyed in a tornado. By the time the summer is over, the house will be completely built—but several of the young adults will have lost their heads. This novel is a testament to the importance of volunteer work...and the dangers of untrained teens using power tools.
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Okay, I'd never heard of most of those books (which is odd, considering how much time I spend in the young adult sections of various bookstores), so I wasn't really sure how tongue-in-cheek the descriptions were ("these books aren't really about headless people, right?") until I got to Knuffle Bunny, and then I felt better.
For the record, I think the headless images work for a cover like Knuffle Bunny, that's clearly from a child's point of view, or when it's an extreme closeup like First Boy.
Agreed.
I can understand wanting to leave characters' faces up readers' imagination (assuming that's the idea behind the fad; I'm not sure), but it's gotten tiresome. Especially in the case of photos of females, when what's left is so often a slender/busty torso-- then it seems like plain old objectification. :-P
Yeah, when you're getting a straight shot of a chest or ass (the summer vacation one), it's definitely worthy of a few eyerolls. But when it's zeroing in on, say, feet, that doesn't bother me so much. (That Lost It cover is fairly intriguing)