Posts Tagged cover reveal

Cover Reveal: GOOD DIFFERENT, by Meg Eden Kuyatt

By Jennifer Swanson on July 7, 2022 / Articles

Cover Reveal: GOOD DIFFERENT

It’s cover reveal day at Mixed-Up Files, and we’re so excited! Today we get to reveal the cover for Meg Eden Kuyatt’s middle-grade debut: GOOD DIFFERENT.

Here it is!

Okay, okay, I’m just playing. That’s not exactly it …. and I PROMISE I really will show you in just a moment. t’s AMAZING and I’m chomping at the bit to share …. in just a minute or two.

When we do a cover reveal here at Mixed-Up Files, before we show you the art, we love the chance to hear from the wonderful creators who turn an author’s themes and characters into covers that will lure readers to pick up the book. For GOOD DIFFERENT, that artist was Luna Valentine.

Meet Illustrator Luna Valentine

MUF: How did you decide which story elements to focus on for this cover?

LV: I’ve had a lot of input and help from an incredible design team. We’ve explored a lot of different ideas and in the end had a wide variety of ideas to choose from. I think early on the phrase “be a dragon” stood out to me personally and I tried to incorporate it as a design element in every idea we worked on. It’s really empowering to be a dragon.

MUF: Which elements did you enjoy working with the most?

LV: My absolute favourite part was the character design. I feel like you can connect to a story on a whole new level if you connect with the protagonist, and from the moment I got the character description of Selah I could just picture her so clearly in my head. Now getting her to look exactly like she did in my head was a challenge but it was so much fun.

MUF: What is your artistic process for cover art?

LV: Usually I start with super rough, teeny tiny sketches straight away after reading the brief, just to get my initial ideas down on paper. Then I’ll do an in depth character design, usually with a bunch of different hair styles, clothing choices, maybe even a couple of different expressions. I draw the character in a lot of different poses. The first sketches are always so stiff and lifeless, but when you get into it, and allow yourself the time to experiment with different ideas, different designs and even make some mistakes, your sketches will finally start looking the way you want them to. I think the key is not to spend too much time on artwork at first and then go back and refine it over days, even weeks until it starts looking the way you want it to.

MUF: What do you enjoy about illustrating cover artwork in general?

LV: Honestly my favourite part is seeing it in print, on a shelf in a book shop or on my doorstep. I love the feeling of a new book. And knowing I helped to create it is so satisfying.

About Luna:

Luna is a Polish children’s book illustrator, living in Nottingham, UK.

She works digitally, finding inspiration in folk tales, video games, cute Japanese food, under her bed and other places nobody thinks to look. Her art has been described as humorous, quirky and colorful. At Nottingham Trent University she studied Graphic Design and went on to receive her Masters in Illustration. Luna has worked with a variety of clients including Paper Rose, Paperchase and Arteza. When Luna is not drawing, you can find her traveling the world to find the perfect cup of coffee.

Stay In Touch:

Wesbite

Instagram: @lunavaltineart

Twitch:

The Cover Reveal

And now for the moment we’ve all been waiting for … drum roll …. the real thing! Here’s the cover for GOOD DIFFERENT, by Meg Eden Kuyatt.

About GOOD DIFFERENT

A extraordinary novel-in-verse for fans of Starfish and A Kind of Spark about a neurodivergent girl who comes to understand and celebrate her difference.

Selah knows her rules for being normal.

She always, always sticks to them. This means keeping her feelings locked tightly inside, despite the way they build up inside her as each school day goes on, so that she has to run to the bathroom and hide in the stall until she can calm down. So that she has to tear off her normal-person mask the second she gets home from school, and listen to her favorite pop song on repeat, trying to recharge. Selah feels like a dragon stuck in a world of humans, but she knows how to hide it.

Until the day she explodes and hits a fellow student.

Selah’s friends pull away from her, her school threatens expulsion, and her comfortable, familiar world starts to crumble.

But as Selah starts to figure out more about who she is, she comes to understand that different doesn’t mean damaged. Can she get her school to understand that, too, before it’s too late?

Meet Author Meg Eden Kuyatt

MUF: Did you get to weigh in on any of these details in this cover art?

MEK: I gave a description of Selah (the protagonist) and some ideas of what I was envisioning, as well as styles I liked. My main comment was that I really wanted a dragon integrated into the cover—and I LOVE how Luna did this!

MUF: Is there one element of this illustration that stands out in particular for you as the author or that resonates with favorite parts of your story?

MEK: My favorite parts are Selah’s dragon wings. I love how they’re built out of all these things Selah learns in the novel, like the sensory tools she discovers (like earplugs and sunglasses), or how she rethinks words she’s grown up hearing, like “weird.” I really love how it shows that the tools Selah learns about empower her, like dragon wings! I can’t imagine a better image that captures the heart of this story!

MUF: Anything else you would like to tell us about your cover and why it is special to you?

MEK: I really didn’t have ideas for the cover, or a specific way I envisioned it, but it was really important to me that it would pull in kids who, like Selah, may also have a special interest in dragons. So I was incredibly happy to see this cover, which captured what I wanted, even though I didn’t know how to express it! It gives a magical touch (because writing is magic!) but still tells us this is a contemporary story, that you can find those little glimmers of magic in the real world. I’m in love with my cover!

MUF: Congratulations, and we’re so excited to read GOOD DIFFERENT!

About Meg

Meg Eden Kuyatt is a 2020 Pitch Wars mentee, and teaches creative writing at Anne Arundel Community College. She is the author of the 2021 Towson Prize for Literature winning poetry collection “Drowning in the Floating World” (Press 53, 2020) and children’s novels, most recently “Good Different” (Scholastic, 2023).

Stay In Touch and Preorder

Website

https://linktr.ee/medenauthor

Twitter: @ConfusedNarwhal

Instagram: @meden_author

Facebook: Meg Eden Writes Poems

Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/buwBXX

GOOD DIFFERENT comes out in March 2023. Preorder now from Bookshop.com!

Cover Reveal: THE TILTERSMITH by Amy Herrick

By Greg R. Fishbone on November 12, 2021 / Articles, New Releases

Drumroll please…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ViZqQkddCc

I am so excited for this chance to present a cover reveal and preview of Amy Herrick’s upcoming book, The Tiltersmith, which promises supernatural overtones that allude to the works of Susan Cooper and Madeleine L’Engle.

Spring is late coming to Brooklyn, NY, and while climate change might have something to do with the chaotic weather patterns bringing late snow and even a tornado to the city, there may be supernatural elements at work, too. A curious character named the Tiltersmith —Superintendent Tiltersmith, he claims — shows up at the kids’ school, in search of the tools that will bring Spring to life. But the Tiltersmith is trying to collect them himself and use them to keep the Lady of spring underground and in his power. Unbeknownst to Edward, Feenix, Danton, and Brigit, the tools have been entrusted to them, but competing forces are working to lead and mis-lead them. If the quartet can protect and use the tools properly, spring will arrive. But if the Tiltersmith has his way, as the underworld teems with life, our world will be trapped in an eternal winter.

The cover features a tight grouping of four young heroes surrounded by a maelstrom of colors. Lightning bolts strike leaves from the trees, hinting at the story’s chaotic weather themes. The kids are layered in brightly colored outerwear, arms akimbo, with hair and jewelry chains flying as if we’ve caught them in the middle of a dance.

And you’ll see it soon.

But first, an excerpt…

Edward Finds a Cocoon

Edward was dreaming. He was trying to pick something up with a spoon. The thing, which was going to lead him to a brilliant scientific discovery, kept sliding away like a piece of spaghetti. Then, just as he thought he’d finally got it, there was a tremendous kaboooooom! and he woke up.

He found himself in the deep middle of the night. A thunderbolt lit the sky outside his window, and in its brief flash of light, he saw that it was snowing again. Seriously? It was March 21. Enough already with the snow.

He lay there counting. Ten seconds and kaboooooom! This meant, he knew, that the storm was about two miles away. He waited for the next flash of lightning, which came quickly. It tore out of the clouds and shot down behind the houses beyond Ninth Street. Snow swirled madly through the air. This time the kaboooooom! came only five seconds later.

The storm was headed right this way.

Edward forced himself out of bed with his blanket around his shoulders. He stood in front of the window, scanning the sky. He wanted to see another bolt up close.

Perhaps thirty seconds later, the next strike happened, right up the street. This time the lightning appeared to burst out of the ground like an enormous electrified finger. It was met almost simultaneously by a bolt from the sky, followed by an enormous concussive baaadoooooom! The whole house shook, and the windows rattled. Peering into the darkness and the snow, Edward saw a round metal disk go flying through the air. It landed with a great crumpling noise on top of a nearby car. The roof of the car folded upward like a piece of origami paper. The disk then slid off the car and came to a stop balanced against its side.

A manhole cover! That was what it had to be. He’d read all about how these things happened. Between the flammable gases that could build up underground and the old and frayed electrical wiring down there, sometimes all it took was a little spark to cause an explosion and—boooom!—a manhole cover would go flying off.

His theory was confirmed when a long tongue of fire shot up from what he could see was an open hole in the middle of the street. All the streetlamps went out like the candles on a birthday cake as the tongue of flame reached higher and higher and slowly died back. He was surprised at what a short time it took before the fire department and then Con Edison began to arrive.

A few minutes later, Edward’s aunt Kit knocked on the door and came in without waiting for an invitation. She was barefoot and wearing her flannel pajamas. The storm had already begun to move slowly off. She joined him at the window. “Well, did you see it?” she asked.

“Did I see what? Could you be a little more specific?” Her vagueness often drove him crazy.

“The part where the lightning shot up out of the ground.”

“Well, yes, I did. That was pretty cool. But it’s common, you know. There’s a positive electrical charge on the ground, and it shoots upward to meet the negative electrical charge coming from the clouds. Happens all the time.”

“Does it, now? Well, that’s an interesting explanation.” “Isn’t it?” he said and hoped she wasn’t going to give him one of her crazy alternative theories.

She didn’t. Instead, she said, “Well, in any case, the timing is amazing, isn’t it?”

He didn’t like to encourage her, but he couldn’t help asking her what this meant.

“I mean with tomorrow being what it is.” “What’s tomorrow?”

“Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten. Well, you’ll remember in the morning. We’d better get to bed. We’re going to need our sleep.”

Science and supernatural weirdness in a middle-grade novel that starts on a dark and stormy night… If you liked A Wrinkle in Time, this book will hook you for sure.

And now, the big reveal

The Tiltersmith releases on April 5, 2022 from Algonquin Young Readers.

About Amy Herrick:

Amy Herrick grew up in Queens, New York, and attended SUNY Binghamton and the University of Iowa. She lives in Brooklyn, where she has raised two sons, taught pre-K and grade school, written books, and kept company with her husband and numerous pets. A retired teacher, she loves traveling, learning Spanish, and above all reducing her carbon footprint.

Cover Reveal for Coming of Age: 13 B’Nai Mitzvah Stories!

By JROSEN on September 10, 2021 / Articles

Hello Mixed-Up Filers!

Hope you’re having a good start to the school year! Today, I’m really excited.

Why, you wonder?

Well, it’s because we have a cover reveal!

For those of you who follow me on social media, and by the way, if you don’t, I’m not sure why not, but that’s neither here nor there. Anyway, if you do follow me, you may recall that a few months ago I mentioned an anthology of Jewish stories that I helped put together, called Coming of Age: 13 B’Nai Mitzvah Stories. As you might be able to deduce from the title, it’s a collection of Bar and Bat Mitzvah tales geared to a middle grade audience, and is coming out next year from Albert Whitman.

I can honestly say that it’s one of the things that I’m most proud to be associated with since I started writing kidlit. At a time when antisemitism is skyrocketing here and around the world, I feel it’s important to have Jewish stories represented in children’s books, and this anthology helps with that.

So, thanks to Henry Herz for helping me put this together and being a co-editor for this special project, my agent, Nicole Resciniti for helping find it a home, Albert Whitman for believing in it, but even more importantly, a special and heartfelt thanks to the lineup of amazing authors who all jumped aboard when asked.

Care to find out who they are?

Well, don’t fret, I’m going to tell you now!

Besides stories from me and Henry, we have ones from:

Sarah Aronson, Nora Raleigh Baskin, Barbara Bottner, Stacia Deutsch, Debbie Reed Fischer, Debra Green, Alan Katz, Nancy Krulik, Stacie Ramey, Melissa Roske, Laura Shovan, and a poem by Jane Yolen!

Thank you again to all these amazing people, and without further ado, here’s the cover for Coming of Age: 13 B’Nai Mitzvah Stories!

Thanks for indulging me with this Mixed-Up Filers, and I can’t wait for you to be able to read it! I’d say to be on the lookout for the book, but I’m pretty sure that I’ll remind all of you at least once or twice before it happens.

So, until next time . . .

Jonathan Rosen

Posts Tagged cover reveal

Cover Reveal: GOOD DIFFERENT, by Meg Eden Kuyatt