Very interesting points made! I have never really noticed the impact of a book’s cover, but children probably pick books they want to read based on what it looks like.
Some books have a what I consider a “cover identity crisis.” Covers communicate mood and genre and setting — and then there are those covers that confound. The Dark Days of Hamburger Halpin is one such book with a confouding cover. In hardcover, it features three cartoon-art friends, tiptoeing forward in what first appears to be a Hardy-Boys-ish sleuthing story for tweens. In paperback, the cover is a brooding, black-and-white shot of an adolescent walking away from us down a railroad track. It leave you thinking, “Why yes, those days must be dark!” But don’t let the cover(s) fool you. In some ways, the book is neither a typical detective story nor a piece of realistic teen fiction, and in other ways it is both. Part of what I love most about The Dark Days of Hamburger Halpin is its ability to dabble in a little bit of…
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