What do you think of putting new covers on old books? I used to hate it when I was a kid . . . it seemed to me like a cheat (pretending a book was contemporary when it wasn't) and the inside illustrations never matched the cover, which messed with my reality. Grownups forget that for kid readers, the illustrations ARE the characters.

RE: Percy Jackson audio, my god don't get me started. The camper Ethan has a Chinese last name but, come on, his name is ETHAN. And Jesse Berns gives him an East Asian accent too. Also, his pronunciation is terrible. Kronos is "Crow-nos" and ichor is "icker". Now when my kids talk about the Greek gods they sound like they're from Queens.

Some books really need new covers - especially ones that originally had photographs and a few years later, hello! nobody is wearing ponytails-to-the-side anymore! Some covers, like Trina Schart Hyman's for Patricia Wrede's Enchanted Forest quartet, should be LEFT ALONE.

As a kid I also disliked seeing new covers on books, even if the "old" cover I knew had replaced an earlier cover or two or three.

"Jon and Kate plus Fuse 8" made me laugh out loud. I'll keep my fingers crossed for you.

We were just talking about Trina Schart Hyman's perfect Bagthorpe covers which should also have been LEFT ALONE!

Speaking of which: The Bagthorpes are geat summer books. The first three all take place in the same summer. Then Book 5 and Book 6 are the following summer.
Perfect summer moment: Eating stew on the lawn during a short break in the Great Daisy Chain World Record Attempt.

Both Jon Scieszka and Kate DiCamillo will be attending the Decatur Book Festival Labor Day Weekend come on down to Atlanta and make that dream a reality!

Thanks for the link. Frank Morrison stopped by the bookstore I work at in Atlanta. He said he was invited to the Decatur Book festival. I told him he should go, it gets bigger and better every year.

InterLibrary Loans across state lines have always cost $5, and often much more. -- libraries have simply eaten the cost as a service to customers. No longer. I think most libraries nowadays are planning to put that charge onto the customer. (After all, it's the customer who, on one hand, wants to use the free library more and, on the other hand, voted to cut the library budget.)

Dandelion Wine is the BEST summer book ever! I told the part about the new sneakers for my storytelling class in library school. I also think The Penderwicks is a brilliant summer read.

Why do British publications consistently have such awful covers? This really struck me a few years ago when I was wandering through a bookstore in London. Many of the American titles had completely new covers for the Brit market, and it was as if they'd gone out of their way to make them unattractive. Wouldn't want to sell too many books now, would we . . . .

There is in fact a blog dedicated to childrens and YA Book covers (mostly new books), jacketwhys dot wordpress dot com

Ah, I see now that you probably meant new covers as in replacement covers...not "new covers" as in what Jacket Whys covers....

What I loathe are the new(er) covers for Noel Streatfeild's Shoes books.

Yes to The Penderwicks as a terrific summer read - and now I'll have to go and read the Bagthorpe books.

Wow - my library only has the 5th and 6th Bagthorpe books - the rest are audio only. This does not seem right . . .