The latest from designer Peter Lutjen.Never Slow Dance with a Zombie by E. Van Lowe, is a young adult book about the trials and tribulations of dealing with zombie boys.
Peter has a lot of warm playfulness in his design work, just perfect for this project. But the heartache of working with Peter is, often there are too many great options to chose from.
I love each of these for different reasons. But in the end, I came strongly on the side of the "flowers" version, which, thankfully,was the one approved. Although it was touch and go for a while...
I love each of these for different reasons. But in the end, I came strongly on the side of the "flowers" version, which, thankfully,was the one approved. Although it was touch and go for a while...
My second favorite was "feet". I know, there are tons of covers that just show legs, but it was so easy to imagine the girl trying to stand tall and look sophisticated next to the disheveled zombie sneakered boy. Sales nixed it right off the bat. I never really got a sense why.
For a while "pink dress" was in the lead - they liked seeing the girl. I liked this a lot and would have championed it...except there was something so funny-yet-sweet-yet-sad-and-cute-but-mostly-funny about the zombie suitor.
"Locker" is cool looking but better for a vampire book. It was briefly held up as a favorite but I'm glad we were able to steer everyone away from Twilight-fever. I actually didn't show it the first time around, for fear of said Twilight-fever, but at one point people were asking about it being more romantic, so I threw it into the mix.
Black and white "Dance" version is full of awesome, but better for an older crowd.
In the end, the editor and I were rooting for Flowers, while others were backing Pink Dress. At that point it came down to a "focus group" of four or five kids someone knew, all of which went with the flowers...Proving what I always suspected: My taste have not risen since I was 14.