That’s not my Encyclopedia Brown!
Charting the generational divide in children’s book covers
Under normal circumstances I am not a believer in privileging nostalgia over progress. Just because something is different than it once was does not mean it is de facto worse, a violence perpetrated on the way things should always be.
This attitude was tested when I went rooting around the internet in the wake of the passing of beloved children’s book author Beverly Cleary, and among some wonderful tributes and remembrances I saw what had happened to the cover of Cleary’s “Runaway Ralph” between the time of its release in 1970 and today.
The original cover is illustrated by Louis Darling, a longtime collaborator with Cleary, completed not long before his death. It is — and I don’t say this lightly — a work of art. The detailed sketch of Ralph on the motorcycle, helmet on, angled slightly down right to left to connote speed and travel, with the title in a distinctive font just below, is worth looking at for a long time to appreciate the skill of the design. The current cover of the book is, to put it as kindly as I can, “cute.”
I went to my Substack newsletter readers to share my ire and ask if anyone else had experienced this same distress about other changes in book covers.
Reader Jeni Dunaway Nishibun alerted me to the “Anastasia Krupnik” series by Lois Lowry, which debuted in the ’70s featuring (in Nishibun’s words) “a girl with her owl-eyed glasses.” Over time, the covers morphed into a ’90s version of what Nishibun calls an “American Girl Magazine” feeling. To my eye, they look like proto-junior Instagram influencer shots and are truly jarring when judged against the originals. You’d never know they were attached to the same book. Today’s versions have turned Anastasia “into a Bratz doll, and I cannot fathom why,” according to Nishibun.
The Melendy Family series by Elizabeth Enright, first published in 1941, was named by at least half-dozen folks who noted some significant shifts over time.
Carrie Wujek shared a scan of the original cover of Madeleine L’Engle’s “A Wrinkle in Time” that brought me a sharp shock of recognition, and sent me looking for other editions. I found that it’s a cover that has been updated many times, but each one seems to fit the spirit of the book with an artist’s attempt to reimagine the book anew.
Of course, some books are unchanged. “The Phantom Tollbooth” by Norton Juster, with illustrations by Jules Feiffer, is nearly the same in every edition. Shel Silverstein’s own drawings will forever remain married to his verse in “Where the Sidewalk Ends.” The original cover of “Charlotte’s Web,” with a worried Wilbur the pig gathered under Fern’s arm, seems to be incorporated in most cover renovations.
Encyclopedia Brown, one of my personal favorites, has gone through an Anastasia Krupnik-like series of alterations. The original volumes feature Leonard Shortall illustrations that have embedded the characters in my psyche, but later editions went so far as to include a photographed version of a child model standing in for Encyclopedia. Blaspheme!
Look, I get it, books need updated packaging for younger readers to find them attractive. I recall pulling an aged edition of “Johnny Tremain” off the shelf at the Greenbriar School library and wondering what kind of square would read this when you could dig into “Superfudge.” I just wish the updates would reflect the spirit of the words inside.
In the end, I’m going to shelve my ire and listen to reader Diane Horban, who recently retired from my middle school alma mater, Northbrook Junior High, where she taught language arts: “Let the covers change! It’s the story that matters!”
John Warner is the author of “Sustainable. Resilient. Free.: The Future of Public Higher Education.”
Twitter @biblioracle