Tuesday, June 19, 2012

3 decades, one cover

I like Pete Hautman. I've only read a couple of his books, but I like his writing. I can't muster enthusiasm for What Boys Really Want. No matter what it's about, the cover tells me it's something else. Every time I see the cover, I find it reminiscent--jarringly reminiscent--of Patricia Hermes' What If They Knew. Which I read something like four hundred times as a kid. (What can I say, it was a book and it was in my room; therefore it was a go-to when I was supposed to be sleeping.)

 It's bad enough when recently-published books have similar covers, but it's just weird to me when a book has such a throw-back sort of cover. But then I'm probably one of, like, six people on earth who knows the 1983 book, and of those six, I'm probably the only one aware of current teen books. But I can't bring myself to give this one a chance, because the only vibe I get from the cover is "it's the mid-80s and you're reading under the covers with a flashlight." Which is totally unfair to the book, but they're designed specifically to get our attention--for better or worse, I guess.

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