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readergirlz is a literacy and social media project for teens, awarded the National Book Foundation's Innovations in Reading Prize. The rgz blog serves as a depot for news and YA reviews from industry professionals and teens. As volunteers return full force to their own YA writing, the organization continues to hold one initiative a year to impact teen literacy. All are welcome to "like" us on Facebook!

Monday, October 10, 2011

Cover Stories: The Dark Days of Hamburger Halpin (Paperback)

I noticed that Josh Berk's novel, The Dark Days of Hamburger Halpin, got a completely revised paperback cover this summer, so I asked Josh to come back and share the new Cover Story. Because his original one? Highly entertaining.

Here's Josh:

"As mentioned in my previous Cover Story, Will Halpin (the star of THE DARK DAYS OF HAMBURGER HALPIN) was once a cartoon and is now a real boy! On the cover of the hardcover, Will (along with his co-stars Ebony and Devon) was rendered cartoon-style by French artist Philippe Petit-Roulet. It was a very cool cover (right), but for the paperback I was informed that my publisher was going to 'go in a different direction.' (I'm not sure why I put that in quotes because it may not be a direct quote.)

"Various other directions were suggested. For example, one had as its central image an old diagram of the lobes of the human brain. It looked a lot like this:


"The title was zooming out of the guy's ear. It looked really awesome to me, but it was decided that it didn't exactly say 'teen friendly.' There was also a version of the cover pitched which had a bunch of crows spelling the title in yarn. I thought this was great too! (I'm not hard to please I guess...) It's hard to explain, but it looked awesome. Alas, it was deemed as not exactly the 'teen vibe.' (Note: Teens don't love crows? They should. Crows are awesome. Maybe teens hate yarn.)

"So the next cover pitched was this black and white image of a dude walking in the woods..."

Read the rest of Josh's Cover Story at melissacwalker.com.

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