Over the years, classic books — those (mostly) treasured tomes that have become part of the canon, taught in high schools and universities across the land — see their covers revamped every several years to become accessible to a new generation of readers. Or at least, that’s the hope.
Alert bookseller and periodic ShelfTalker guest blogger Kenny Brechner of DDG Booksellers in Farmington, Maine, has noticed that some of these covers are less successful than others in attracting their rightful readership, and he tells us why, most humorously.
Enjoy!
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A Costume Ball for Classic Books
By Kenny Brechner, DDG Booksellers
The idea of using specially designed cover art to cause teenagers to either buy classic books, actually read them when gifted, or approach homework relating to them with zeal, is not new. Nor can it be fairly said to have exclusively produced the advanced kind of failure which is the subject of this serious essay. There have been instances of success as seen at right.  It is also true of course that there are young readers now, as there have always been, who enjoy reading great books from the past due to their innate disposition as readers. Nonetheless, there is a long standing tradition of cover art failure in marketing classics to young adults. This failure is identified by covers which have two particular qualities. First, the cover must truly appall, disorient, and imperil the sanity of any older reader who already loves the book provoking an immediate verbal exclamation of dismay. Second, it must only appeal to readers who will be certain to loathe the book itself and feel duped.
A classic example can be seen to the right in this cover to the 1991 Bantam edition of The Worm Ouroboros. The Worm is one of my favorite books and I can tell you with honest conviction that it fulfills the first of our criteria admirably. Even at this respectable distance of years the pain is still fresh. The perverse genius of the design is that the cover makes it appear that the book contains fantasy pap circa 1986-91: one reasonably expects a weak Tolkien rip off with magical beasts, quests, some sword fighting and some hot damsels. No literary minded person would get within reading distance of it. Secondly, anyone to whom the cover appealed would be quickly and totally disappointed to find a highly literary fantasy with Saga roots and archaic English arrayed upon the pages. The cover is a perfect failure, it repels its true audience, and attracts only people who will find it unpalatable.
Creating classics for YA cover failure is not a static art however. It requires fresh ingenuity in order to continue to excite the respective vistas of horror and disappointment which are its trademark. The purpose of this essay is to remark upon the latest advancements, propose some fresh techniques, and solicit your involvement in this ongoing struggle to convince average teen readers that publishers, educators, and booksellers are devious, clueless, and not to be trusted. An easy path to failure would be to choose a classic which few teenagers would actually enjoy reading under any circumstances, such as Pamela or Moll Flanders. We are interested in the sterner challenge of protecting classics from being read by teenagers who would actually like them.  Let us look then at three examples of modern, innovative, state of the art failure provided below with commentary. These examples will be followed by our own attempt at a substantive contribution to this important effort.

This is a bold design which succeeds admirably at failing in both categories. Its ability to horrify Wuthering Heights fans proved to be very pronounced in our test group. One tester, after her eyes lit on the cover, literally shrieked in pain saying. “Are you telling me this is real? This isn’t even period. Didn’t someone tell them that it wasn’t a regency romance? Why is this happening? AAAH I can’t look at it anymore.” Others noted that Catherine’s dress would have been quite something to try and walk along the wild moors in. Another tester remarked that “Heathcliff looks more like the quiet guy who sits behind you in chem class, the one your parents wish you would date instead of that long-haired ne’er-do-well you’ve taken up with.” In short, the cover’s ability to completely misrepresent the characters it portrays caused universal feelings of revulsion in our test group. Mission accomplished vis-à-vis appalling familiar readers. In terms of the second element—alluring only new readers who will then dislike the book—Wuthering Heights has a strong appeal to young readers and there is thus an almost unavoidable amount of inadvertent success which is sure to occur with any version. Nonetheless, the vapidly romantic nature of the cover does strongly insure that those teenagers who are too shallow to enjoy Wuthering Heights will be the likeliest ones to open the book.