The Message of Handmade

Book cover tropes (if not mimicry) extends beyond adult titles. The other day I ducked into Wild Rumpus in the Linden Hills neighborhood of Minneapolis and was quickly overwhelmed by the number of middle grade (and some YA) titles that use hand lettering:










There are plenty of books that don't look like this, of course, but it only took a few minutes to walk around finding these.

Fantasy books don't follow this pattern, and often follow another (more boring) pattern. I'm not sure if this book qualifies as fantasy or historical fiction, but its cover stood out from all the others:


If all the covers looked like this, that wouldn't work either, of course. But they don't, so it looks fresh and interesting. I wanted to take it home. I am not the target audience for any of these books, so my opinion is not critical, but their publishers and designers get to hear from me anyway.