As well reported at Jacket Knack, silhouettes are a cover trend on the rise. The following pair of covers both sport silhouettes, but with a couple additional elements that strengthen the correlation. Let’s take a look at the first cover:
Marcelo in the Real World by Francisco X. Stork.
And now, the counterpart:
The Spiderwick Chronicles: The Completely Fantastical Edition by Holly Black & Toni DiTerlizzi.
Side by side:
The low title, nighttime setting, the trees, and the lights (which are stars on the Marcello cover, but faeries (I’m assuming) on Spiderwick) give these two a similar feel, don’t you think?
100 Scope Notes 
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February 4, 2010 at 4:54 pm
Eric
Yeah you’re right the silhouettes are getting out of hand. Compare
last year’s “Highway Cats” to Zilpha Keatley Snyder’s newest “William S
and the Great Escape”. Both have running silhouettes and the same
color scheme too. It’s almost as if the cover designer removed the
cats from the latter cover, and replaced them with some Penderwicks.
Any chance these are the same artist?
February 5, 2010 at 9:55 am
Diane
Definitely!!
February 5, 2010 at 8:01 pm
Julie Larios
I don’t know if artists are copying each other so much as just following a trend and using images that we respond to – human figures under a dark sky, bare branches, stars…..We do tend to have templates in our head/our memories, and maybe the similarities are coming from there. It reminds me of Lawrence Weschler’s theory about convergences – iconic images that repeat through the ages (it’s in his book EVERYTHING THAT RISES: A BOOK OF CONVERGENCES. Weschler is so fascinating, no matter what he writes. ) I know that marketing depts. look for trends, and that’s what the many silhouettes are about, but beyond that, I think the similarities are about meaningful patterns.
February 9, 2010 at 12:14 am
Laura W.
Have you seen the covers of I’m Down and Sweet, Hereafter? Def a hair-raising cover controversy going on there.
February 9, 2010 at 7:17 am
Scope Notes
Hmm – I have not. I’ll be sure to check them out!