Three Cheers for Speaking Up!

I have been a fan of author Shannon Hale for a long time. I love her writing. She keeps up on a weekly blog that I check in on periodically. I really enjoyed her books, but I find that I also really enjoy reading her perspectives on the writing process, being an author, being a mother, and trying to juggle all of those. She is witty, honest, and open.

One of her series is called the Bayern series. There are currently four books published, the first of which is The Goose Girl. I love the idea of people being born with, or acquiring special gifts that they can use to influence for good or evil and watching how the characters who have these gifts choose to use them. Being a visual person as well, I loved the original hardback covers, which featured beautiful hand-drawn art that looked antique and befitting a faraway time and place. For reasons unknown, the publisher put out the last book, Forest Born, with an entirely different cover design and began to reissue the original three books with new covers featuring photographs of teenage girls. For me, the new covers spoiled the books. The girls don't look like they belong in the story. They look like they're playing dress-up with Princess Bride costumes. They look too contemporary.

Well, it turns out the publisher has not heard the end of complaints from people moaning about the new covers and wishing for a return to the original cover art. Shannon just posted on her blog about the change and a picture of the new cover for the fourth book. I put off buying or even reading the fourth book because I just couldn't bear to buy a cover that didn't match my others, and while the girl on the cover is pretty, it didn't make me want to buy it. So I will wait for October for the new cover to come out. Here are the two covers. Which do you like more?