Now, the first thing I want to talk about is my favorite
series of books about merpeople: The Ingo Chronicles by the fabulous Helen
Dunmore. To the left is a group picture of all four in the series.
Because Helen Dunmore decided to write a fifth book (a spin-off
series), Harper Collins is recovering the entire set to match the new cover of
number five! Now I’m quite in love with the originals myself, so I was very
worried that I wouldn’t be pleased with the recovers.
I have to say, after seeing the final product (on the
right), I’m not too impressed for a number of reasons:
1) No tails-This is a book about mermaids and while it’s
true that the main girl character isn’t a mermaid herself, the old covers
pulled you in straight away and you knew what kind of story you were in for.
2) Unoriginal-Every book nowadays features a cover with a
girls body, close up face, or some weird abstract pose that conceals the main
characters face. One word: BORING.
3) Too much-The covers are extremely cluttered. There’s a
ridiculous font, coupled with a cartoon
mermaid, a girl swimming, swirly edits around the whole thing AND a border!
Tone it down!
And yet, I’ll most likely still be buying the new set
because, well, it’s just my favorite series of books and I want all the versions
on my shelf.
New covers also means the readership is going to grow and
who can complain about that?
-The Mermaid Guru
