Cover Stories: Hold Still by Nina LaCour

I think Hold Still, which is a beautiful book and was a Featured Title in November, has gotten two great covers (hardcover and paperback) so I had to ask Nina LaCour about each one. Here she is:

"I was super worried about my cover. My mom used to be a graphic designer so I grew up a little bit of adesign snob. My biggest worry was that the art team would make the book look to girly, or too light, that they would strike a tone that didn't suit the story. So when I heard that Mia Nolting (who had been writing out the journal entries in the novel since before I even had an agent) was going to do the cover art, I was thrilled and relieved. I love Mia's work. It's clean and delicate and has this awesome current, indie quality while still being poignant and honest and really moving. Plus, she's my friend. I loved the first concept she came up with: a girl in jeans with a camera around her neck, a strip mall behind her, a layer of text (below). The concept evolved from there to include a girl's face with the camera raised in front of it and another girl spinning in the distance, and I liked this idea of overlapping images.

"Then, I got a call from my wonderful editor, Julie Strauss-Gabel, who told me that people at Penguin were getting excited about the book, and what we thought was going to be a pretty quiet book was actually going to be a 'big' book for the fall season. I was thrilled to hear this news, but bummed to hear that it meant we were moving in a different direction with the cover. Mia's drawings were no longer going to be on it--instead we would be going with a photograph.

"The next cover I saw was a complete departure. It was a photograph of a mournful-looking girl with a large shadow hovering behind her. The photograph was black and white and the title was written in a red computer font. I did not like this cover. The girl was too glamorous and it felt so oppressively sad..."

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

Hold Still: Balancing Grief With Hope

This week's focus is on Nina LaCour's Hold Still, and Nina talked about how it was difficult to portray main character Caitlin's grief at the suicide of her best friend Ingrid without having the whole story filled with angst, which would be hard for a reader to bear.

For discussion: If you've read Hold Still, did you stay with Caitlin in her dark moments, and follow her into the times where she found light? How did you think the balance worked? Did it feel true?

And, in general, have you read other books where the narrator was grieving? How did the author do with the balance of despair and hope?

Featured Title: HOLD STILL, by Nina LaCour

This week, our featured title is one that deals with how we move forward in the face of grief. HOLD STILL, just out in paperback, would be a beautiful, worthy pick no matter what, but we think it particularly dovetails with this month's theme of resilience.

The book has received rave reviews from trade journals and readers alike, and with good reason - steady pacing, authenticity, and wonderfully-rounded characters make for a compelling read. Don't believe me? Here's what School Library Journal had to say:

After losing her best friend, Ingrid, to suicide, Caitlin is completely immobilized. Unable to function, and refusing to visit a therapist, she begins the long journey to wellness alone. During this year of heart-wrenching, raw emotion, Caitlin finds Ingrid's journal, which not only reveals her descent into irreversible depression, but also serves as Caitlin's vehicle for renewed hope in the future. The book is written with honesty, revealing one's pain after the loss of a loved one. Caitlin learns, with the help of new friends and her parents, that there is life after Ingrid.

I'm thrilled to welcome Nina LaCour to readergirlz!

Recently I did a Q&A on my blog, and a woman named Melissa wrote in to ask if I found it difficult to write about grief. This is what I told her:

"Yes, Melissa, it was really hard. On one hand, it was difficult because I wanted Caitlin’s emotional state to be believable–I wanted her to be appropriately stunned and confused and sad–but I also had to keep in mind that people would (hopefully) be reading this, and that most readers (myself included) can only take so much angst. Angst is a good thing, but it can only take you so far."

My novel, Hold Still, is about a 16-year-old girl named Caitlin who has to face life—and high school—after her best friend’s suicide. It wasn’t easy to put myself in that situation and imagine what it would feel like to be her. But the novel isn’t as sad as you might think, and the joyful parts, when Caitlin is discovering the wonders of life again, feeling things she hadn’t felt before and gaining strength—those scenes were exhilarating to write.

I’m so honored to have my novel selected as a recommended read, and even more excited to know that it was chosen for the theme of resilience. Now, with a war that seems never ending, with the recent bullying and suicides, with the daily hardships so many people are facing, what better than a reminder than we can make it through tough times? We struggle and grieve, and then we pull ourselves together, and the parts of life we once took for granted we come to recognize as beautiful and important.

Thank you, Readergirlz!

Thank you, Nina, for joining us and for sharing your thoughts. If there is anything to be gained from grief, it's certainly the reminder not to take our happier times for granted, and coming out the other side of a traumatic experience is, as you say, a testament to our own inner strength.

So what about you, readers? Can you think of a time when grief or trauma forced you to call upon your own inner reserves, and maybe reminded you that you're stronger than you think? We all deserve to be reminded of that now and then - in good times as well as bad!