Golden Fuse Awards – 2008
Happy New Year!
Another year has come and gone and we’re left admiring a host of wonderful, wild, weird children’s books published in the past 365 days. Now unlike Golden Fuse 2006 and Golden Fuse 2007 I feel like I wasn’t giving proper attention to my various weird categories towards the end of the year. My apologies. Still and all, here’s a taste of what I liked and didn’t like relatively recently. In the realm of children’s literature:
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BEST COVER OF THE YEAR:
The Cabinet of Wonders by Marie Rutkoski, cover by David Frankland, jacket design by Jay Colvin.
Our new king of the cover? Maybe so. A good cover artist reads the book and then slips fun and accurate details into their jacket design. Frankland had at least three book jackets this year, but this one was his masterpiece. Even the fox made it into the scene, and he doesn’t even show up until 20 or so pages from the end. Loved the style, the colors, and the choice of scenes to include. Very well done.
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RUNNERS-UP
A Thousand Never Evers by Shana Burg, cover art director unknown. Picture of girl by Michael Forst, picture of cotton field by Dusty Davis.
Not an obvious winner compared to some of the flashier contenders in ’08. But stop a minute and consider what we have here. This is a bit of historical fiction and the girl on the cover is not wearing jeans or Airwalk sneakers (yes, I’m still mad at you A Friendship for Today), and her hair and outfit actually look like they might might be from 1963. The girl looks like an average girl, not a model. Truth be told, I was not a fan of this book one little bit, but I can separate a title from its packaging and this package is skillfully done.
Savvy by Ingrid Law, cover by Brandon Dorman
Actually, I might have given it to Brandon straight out, but I already awarded him the Golden Fuse back in 2006, and I didn’t think it fair to do so again so soon.
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MOST MISLEADING COVER OF 2008
Stella Stands Alone by A. LaFaye
Under normal circumstances this award goes to covers that sport dragons when there are no dragons or other incongruities. This year that didn’t happen as often. Thank goodness for covers like Stella Stands Alone, a very fine novel, where someone slapped a burning suburban home with nice fluffy hedges on the jacket in the hopes that people would assume it was a southern mansion. Lazy lazy.
RUNNERS UP:
Greetings From Nowhere by Barbara O’Connor
It seems cruel that a year after Ms. O’Connor had the best cover of the year (How to Steal a Dog) they slapped this childless postcard of a jacket onto a really fine book. What is appealing about this jacket, people? I label it "misleading" because to look at it you’d think it was about 50-year-old retirees and their pension difficulties. Which isn’t entirely untrue but still . . .
Ever by Gail Carson Levine
White kids. Great. Cause we obviously don’t get enough of those on our children’s books. So where, exactly, is the “olive nose” or person who’s “skin is bronzed”? Ug.
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SADDEST ARC to FINAL COVER SWITCHEROO
I was all kinds of excited to read Gollywhopper Games when I saw the cool John Rocco cover it had:
Good thing it was on the ARC. Dunno if I would have picked it up if it had had this dull as dishwater final jacket image:
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BEST READALOUD PICTURE BOOK:
Footprints in the Snow by Mei Matsuoka
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BEST ENDPAPERS – PICTURE BOOK:
There’s Nothing to do on Mars by Chris Gall
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BEST ENDPAPERS – NOVEL:
Holes: 10th Anniversary Edition by Louis Sachar, designed by Filomena Tuosto and Irene Metaxatos, endpapers possibly created by Vladimir Radunsky (unclear)
(oh, reprints completely count if the inside material is original)
BEST SPINE BENEATH THE JACKET:
Tennyson by Lesley M.M. Blume (art designer unknown)
BEST GRADUATION GIFT PICTURE BOOK:
Cottonball Colin by Jeanne Willis (illustrated by Tony Ross)
RUNNER-UP:
Garmann’s Summer by Stian Hole
WORST MOTHER OF THE YEAR AWARD:
Denise in Waiting for Normal by Leslie Connor – When burning your child alive isn’t enough.
BEST VILLAIN:
A tie between –
Gar Face in The Underneath by Kathi Appelt, illustrated by David Small
Mrs. Lockton in Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson
I wouldn’t leave either of them in a room with a kitten.
SEPARATED AT BIRTH COVERS:
The Lost Island of Tamarind by Nadia Aguiar
The Ruby Key by Holly Lisle
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BEST OBLIQUE LITERARY ALLUSIONS:
There is a Leroy Brown in The Sherlock Files by Tracy Barrett. He is a member of The Society for the Preservation of Famous Detectives. A fun reference, no?
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BEST LINE:
“The true test of any society isn’t how many lies it has; it’s how many lies it believes.” – The Facttracker by Jason Carton Eaton.
RUNNERS-UP:
“. . . I don’t think people are at their best when they’re wishing sometimes,” – Well Witched by Frances Hardinge
“Smiling innocently, the lass resolved to lick the wall of her bedchamber as soon as she was alone.” – Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow by Jessica Day George.
“How do you hang a man who keeps you laughing?” – The Trouble Begins at 8: The Life of Mark Twain in the Wild, Wild West by Sid Fleischman
“Purring is not so different from praying.” – The Underneath by Kathi Appelt
“Nothing was too fantastic, because the strongest force in the universe had been undone. So how could ordinary blood be stronger?” – White Sands, Red Menace by Ellen Klages
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BEST FIRST LINES:
"When my brother Fish turned thirteen, we moved to the deepest part of inland because of the hurricane and, of course, the fact that he’d caused it." – Savvy by Ingrid Law
RUNNERS-UP:
“There is nothing lonelier than a cat who has been loved, at least for a while, and then abandoned on he side of the road.” – The Underneath by Kathi Appelt.
“For a wonderful moment Ryan thought Josh was going to make it.” – Well Witched by Frances Hardinge
“Conor Broekhart was born to fly; or, more accurately, he was born flying.” – Airman by Eoin Colfer
“Henry Smith’s father told him that if you build your house far enough away from Trouble, then Trouble will never find you.” – Trouble by Gary Schmidt
“Nothing quite compares with the excruciating pain of being kicked in the goolies by a Caterpillar boot.” – The Ice Cream Con by Jimmy Docherty
“The guys say I’m lucky.” – Brooklyn Bridge by Karen Hesse
“The undead are ruining my life. I blame my mother.” – Suddenly Supernatural: School Spirit by Elizabeth Cody Kimmel.
“Have you ever felt your skin being peeled slowly away from your arms and legs?” – Barnaby Grimes: Curse of the Night Wolf by Paul Stewart
“There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife.” – The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
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WEIRDO TRENDS AND SIMILARITIES BETWEEN BOOKS:
Character named Rossamund –
Object of love in Rogue’s Home by Hilari Bell
Main character in Lamplighter by D.M. Cornish
Character named Dewey –
Boy in Down Sand Mountain by Steve Watkins
Girl in White Sands, Red Menace by Ellen Klages
Picture Books Containing Art with Integrated Newsprint –
Footprints in the Snow by Mei Matsuoka
The Storyteller’s Candle by Lucia Gonzalez, illustrated by Lulu Delacre
Lamps Containing Living Substances that Require Tending –
Rogue’s Home by Hilari Bell
Lamplighter by D.M. Cornish
Volcanoes: Not as Fun as Advertised –
Into the Volcano by Don Wood
The Day the World Exploded by Simon Winchester, illustrated by Jason Chin
Nation by Terry Pratchett
Girls with Talking Spider Companions –
Lulu Atlantis and the Quest for True Blue Love by Patricia Martin
The Cabinet of Wonders by Marie Rutkoski
Skinny, balding, middle-aged men get lucky in love –
Savvy by Ingrid Law
The Willoughbys by Lois Lowry
Queen Victoria –
Young Lady: Airman by Eoin Colfer and Bewitching Season by Marissa Doyle
Old Lady: The Island of Mad Scientists by Howard Whitehouse
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Sherlock Holmes –
The Island of Mad Scientists by Howard Whitehouse
The Sherlock Files by Tracy Barrett
Enola Holmes and the Case of the Bizarre Bouquets by Nancy Springer
Enola Holmes and the Case of the Peculiar Pink Fan by Nancy Springer
Scathach –
The Magician by Michael Scott
The Second Siege: The Tapestry (Book 2) by Henry H. Neff
John Dee-
The Magician by Michael Scott
The Cabinet of Wonders (The Kronos Chronicles: Book 1) by Marie Rutkoski
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AND FINALLY, MY FAVORITE CRAZY BOOK TO BOOK CONNECTIONS:
Cicada Summer by Andrea Beatty – “Fern and Dad chat about this and that, but after a while, Fern gets quiet and closes her eyes, and her hand taps out the beat to a song only she can hear.” – pg. 39
White Sands, Red Menace by Ellen Klages – “He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel once his ice cream was gone, keeping time to some music only he could hear.” – pg. 74
Down Sand Mountain by Steve Watkins – The Klages book stars a kid named Dewey. So does Mr. Watkins’s book
“Then he said there was this thing he had figured out in the war and he guessed I didn’t understand it just yet – a lot of people didn’t understand it – that there might be hundreds of categories for the living, but there wasn’t but one category for dead.” – pg. 216
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman – “A graveyard is not normally a democracy, and yet death is the great democracy . . .” – pg. 27
Filed under: Uncategorized
About Betsy Bird
Betsy Bird is currently the Collection Development Manager of the Evanston Public Library system and a former Materials Specialist for New York Public Library. She has served on Newbery, written for Horn Book, and has done other lovely little things that she'd love to tell you about but that she's sure you'd find more interesting to hear of in person. Her opinions are her own and do not reflect those of EPL, SLJ, or any of the other acronyms you might be able to name. Follow her on Twitter: @fuseeight.
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What a great look back at the books of 2008! I feel like I just grazed my way through a large and sumptuous (if somewhat bizarre) breakfast buffet. 🙂
What?? No runner-up (at least) for the elegant, lovely CHAINS cover? The SAVVY art is great but that typography is a disaster…
Chains. Good point about Chains. That was a brilliant brilliant cover. I suppose the only reason I didn’t include was . . . um . . . okay, so I sorta forgot about it. >gulp< But I will defend the typography of Savvy. Didn't have a problem with it, myself.
Great list. However, one problem in your category: Picture Books Containing Painted Newsprint –
The Storyteller’s Candle by Lucia Gonzalez, illustrated by Lulu Delacre… The newsprint is not painted. — Lulu says that she used the actual newsprint of the time period and even tried to find articles talking about whatever she was showing in the pictures. For example, on the pages where she talks about immigrants, she has newsprint which lists names of ship’s passengers/ immigrants. -wendieOld
Thank you for your praise of the illustrators and designers who actually pay attention to content for their cover art! It’s so important!
I know it’s a picture book format, but I’d say Endpapers Award would definitely go to “The Red Shoes” illustrated by Sun Yoo if that were a category.
And yeah…as a Type student I second “working illustrator” in his critique of that Saavy type…yikes! it’s breaking every rule of typographic integrity/good cover design.
What about “The Black Pearls” cover, by illustrator Rebecca Guay? (by Louise Hawes) Check it out!
Everyday schlub that I am I need one of you illustrators to explain to me this typography issue. What rules are being broken, precisely? To the untrained eye it seems okay, but that’s undoubtedly because I’ve not studied subject. “Black Pearls” is indeed lovely, this is true. And rather than say “painted newsprint” I’ll change it to “integrated newsprint” since the point was less that the print was painted upon but worked into the basic illustrations.
Yes, I hate hearing design and art discussed in terms of rules. If it looks good, it is good, is the only rule. Having said that I’m not a fan of the Savvy type.
And the Gollywhomper Games cover! I only hope that the sales and marketing team who made them change from the Rocco cover to something that looks LIKE EVERYTHING ELSE is shown this post.
yes, thanks for showing the ARC of the Gollywhomper and the change to the current cover…wow!! i’d love to find out the reasons why things like that happen!
Ah, typography. It’s not a job; it’s priesthood. Although I’m only the merest novice, I’ll take a crack at explanation and maybe it’ll inspire other, wiser voices to come in and correct me. The basic idea, as I understand it, is that the type on a cover has a bunch of different jobs: it should integrate into the illustration, communicate some sense of the content and just generally work as part of the cover’s visual team. How well any particular typographic choice or set of choices succeeds in this job is largely a matter of taste, which is why disputes in this area are always so… well, disputatious. To my eye – to my taste – the type on the SAVVY cover looks shallow and kind of cheap. It’s just kind of slapped down over the art. It looks like type you’d see on a cereal box: Sugar-Frosted Whammos! The art is rich and lush and layered. I think it calls for a type treatment that’s more subtle, mysterious. Magical. In short, the whole thing looks to me like a rich velvet gown worn with a plastic party hat. The CHAINS cover , on the other hand, uses a font that integrates beautifully with the period-folk art feeling of the illustration. One of the genius things about it is that its visuals – type and illustration – signal the period of the book’s setting while still having a contemporary feeling and impact. It’s a fully modern sentence spoken in period dialect, which is very, very hard to pull off. A good point of contrast here is the cover of the new OCTAVIAN NOTHING book, which – despite beautifully painted cover art – is a dead (and deadly literal) presentation of historical elements. Somebody made a list of stuff that had to be included – costume, check, character, check, background detail, check – then found a basically inoffensive way to arrange it in a layout. It’s a museum exhibit – look! Living History! – and although there’s nothing wrong with that, the CHAINS cover is more: it doesn’t just avoid the pitfalls. It transcends them and does it in a way that connects you first to the human feeling and only then to the history lesson. When you look at that cover, you see the whole before you see the parts; when you investigate the parts, they reinforce the whole. All those design ‘rules’ are mostly about avoiding known pitfalls but for designers – for all of us! – mere avoidance of pitfalls isn’t the same thing as success. For that you have to have to carry whatever design problem you’re dealing with beyond a place of mere solution and into a place of concise, encompassing elegance… a place of poetry. If illustrators in particular get nuts about typography, it’s because we can work very hard to get to that poetry place, only to have the whole enterprise sunk by thoughtless, rushed, unconsidering design choices outside of our control. If I were Brandon Dorman (and I hasten to add that I’m not), I’d have taken one look at the final SAVVY cover and needed a good stiff drink and a long angry phone call with a sympathetic friend. But that’s just me.
That’s a blog post right there, my friend. I’m just ill-equipped to write it. Now you have me incredibly curious about this “typography” thing of which you speak. In general, who makes choices about the title’s type? Does the illustrator ever have any say or is it entirely up to the Art Director? Can a third party come in and throw on a title that no one likes but the people at B&N? So many questions… Thanks for this!
Filed under “it depends”. On who the people involved are (famous/influential/well-informed vs. not), which publisher it is, how close to the final deadline we are and loads of other factors. Basic default: art director and/or designer, but their work is subject to veto/input by well, everyone on earth, basically… up to but not usually including illustrator and author. Sales force, certainly, and chain store buyers get to weigh in at the very least. But two points I should add to the above – ridiculously verbose – post: first, that it’s way, way easier to critique design (or anything ele) than it is to create it. God only knows what time pressure and shifting managerial winds the designer of the SAVVY cover had to deal with in arriving at the final work. Even in the course of disliking it, we ought to acknowledge that no one ever has time enough to get every decision right. Second – and this is said in purest love and admiration – the world of type is one of the purest geekdoms in all the world. People who catch the type bug are not like you and me: they see things that we cannot. Minute differences in the width and depth of descenders are as clear to them as the differences in sound between Swedish and Swahili. The volume inside the curve of a lower-case ‘g’ can sing them love songs or send them screaming out of the room. If you’d like a peek down the rabbit hole, take a look at the typography table on the second floor of the Strand next time you’re there. World of wonder, I promise.
Hey Betsy,
Thanks for the shout out on Gollywhopper. I was a bit let down that they changed the cover too because I really liked the title treatment that Paul Zakris over at Greenwillow had done for it. In response to the other covers you posted…have to agree that the Chains cover is gorgeous, I also have always been arrested by the Savvy cover (at first I thought it was Mary Grand Pre’), but one of my favorites this year was the cover for a YA called simply, Bird. I would love to know who did it, it looks like the work of Jon Foster but I am not sure.
Whoa, Fuse. You are impossibly well-read! I added the Golden Fuse Awards to the big list at the blog.
In the “best oblique literary allusions category,” BLISS by Lauren Myracle references a former student named Agnes Nutter at the main character’s school. I realize the book is YA and YA is not the focus here, but I think I uttered an audible “NO WAY” when I read that.
Oh my gosh, I agree about Savvy. I’m no expert, but when I first saw the cover I thought, ”
Oops, sorry about that. :o( I thought: Beautiful cover!… Why is THAT the font they used for the title? It’s ugly!
Have you seen the cover for Benedict Carey’s The Unknown? It’s a direct relative to the Ruby Key, with the stances and such.
Similar, yes indeed. Hadn’t heard of that one until you brought it up. Thanks for pointed it out to me. Any book starring kids named Lady Di and Tom Jones has my interest.
Hey Elizabeth, thanks so much for giving The Facttracker a GFA! I’m refering to the book of course, not the person, but can’t figure out how to italicize here. If only there was some place I could learn about typography…