Great books with terrible covers!

The Oxford Public Library teen blog has a great display up featuring great books that have horrible covers. What a great idea! Here's a look at their display from their blog:

Just looking at their display, I will totally agree that the cover for Going Bovine is probably not helping it fly off the shelves, though I've read enough about the book to know that it's supposed to be a really good title! I know that I totally judge a book by its cover, so this is a pretty important topic! Those in my book clubs know that I like to look at covers from other editions and compare. What titles have you read that you thought were great but had really bad covers? Off the top of my head, I can think of Across the Universe, which when I first picked it up for book club I was not sure what to expect, but it pulled me in almost immediately!

It's more exciting than two people kissing in space, I swear!!

The Cover of Liar

At our Book Grub meeting on Friday, I put out a table of new books for everyone to browse. We started talking about Liar by Justine Larbalestier, and I mentioned some issues surrounding the original cover image. On the Advance Reading Copy, there was a white girl on the cover who looked nothing like the black main character of the book (even though the cover was very appealing otherwise). Early readers mounted such a fuss over it that the publisher created a whole new, more appropriate cover for it before the real publication date.

Anyway, I just wanted to link you to Justine's original blog post in case you wanted to read more about the cover of Liar that was itself a lie. It's also an interesting look into the publishing world. And to read a bit more about the new cover, read this post.

PS--You may be interested to know that Justine Larbalestier is married to Scott Westerfeld, who we love because of books like Uglies and Peeps! Read her personal FAQ page for more info on that.