Last week in my post about the trend of using silhouettes and uninteresting stock photos (as opposed to interesting ones!) on book covers, I posted what I thought was the final cover for the paperback edition of Alabama Moon, which is being published by Square Fish this September. My assumption seemed safe, as the cover appeared both in the catalog AND in numerous places on the Internet. But as often happens in publishing, the word I took as "final" was anything but!

Having read my post last week, Liz Szabla, editor-in-chief of Feiwel and Friends, wrote me a VERY nice message with the happy news that the silhouette cover had NOT, in fact, been the final cover for the book. She attached the revised cover image to her message, and I am posting it here.

Those of you who have read Alabama Moon will hopefully agree with me that this is a definite improvement over the running silhouette cover image. And those of you who have NOT read Alabama Moon should be sure to do so, be it with this cover or any other. I’ve posted my original review of the book on ShelfTalker once before, but (once again), here are my still-true thoughts, as they first appeared in our store’s newsletter back in 2006:

There are some books that have all the right ingredients, all the right characters, and all the right outcomes: This is one of them. With the writing of his first novel Watt Key has softened the pluck and spirit of Huckleberry Finn, slipped them into the bones of a 21st century boy, and in so doing, arrived. Filled with spunk and fever and a wild, sweet goodness, Alabama Moon is a soul-satisfying, kid-centric story staged with pecan trees, pine logs, and a cast of characters you can’t help but love. Will kids like it? Oh, good heavens, yes. Scout’s honor. I predict that wilderness skills will soon be en vogue again and suggest that a special Moon badge be awarded to every kid who reads this book.