Everyone loves awards: who doesn’t like the look of those shiny round stickers on a book jacket?
The answer, of course, is the poor person, place or thing that gets buried on the book cover. One Crazy Summer shows just what happens when real estate becomes scarce:
First edition cover: that's a lot of hardware...and the Scott O'Dell Award isn't even included.
This must be a later printing, one where they squished the title to make room for a chain of medals.
Luckily, paperback editions allow for new cover designs with empt(ier) space:
Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy suffered similar cover suffocation:
Hence the re-dos:
Ship Breaker strangely did the opposite. The paperback edition is less suited to the dual stickers than the original:
First edition
Paperback
And then there are the book jackets that mesh well with medals:
The medal goes nicely with the round objects motif.
Think balloon, or ironically placed halo.
So based on that, here’s a tongue-in-cheek question: if medal-and-book-jacket compatibility was the only criteria, which 2012 Newbery contender would win the award? I’ve pulled the candidates from the Heavy Medal shortlist. There are of course many other books being brought up in mock Newbery discussions, but these ought to do it for this ridiculous game:
The Penderwicks at Point Mouette has the golden-colored theme going for it, and so does the upper corner of The Money We’ll Save. The only book that really lacks space is The Adventures of Sir Gawain the True. But mostly I’m tempted to balance a medal on Gerald’s (broken) trunk. What about you?
I hadn’t thought specifically of medal placement before, but see how that title placement of One Crazy Summer must have been deliberate. I wonder if jacket designers ever think of medal-potential in the production phases.
Hmm. Maybe they do, but it would be awkward to admit it! I think most books have space for one medal–it gets more problematic with multiple awards.
The Trouble with May Amelia has that empty corner at the top that, to me, is screaming out for it. The medal colors would also complement the black-and-white one nicely.