JUNIOR LIBRARY GUILD SELECTION & COVER REVEAL!

I'm very excited today, Dear Readers! I've got two lovely things to share with you.

Late yesterday evening (due to the time difference) I received an email from my editor at my U.S. publisher Candlewick Press. She told me that Shadows on the Moon, which is due to be released in a hardback edition in America on the 24th of April this year, has been chosen as a Junior Library Guild Selection.

I've heard of the JLG before but they've never picked any of my work to recommend, so this is wonderful news. I'm pretty sure it's also happy-making for Candlewick - my editor says the jacket of the book will be amended before it comes out to show the selection on the flap. The book isn't up on the JLG's website yet (presumably because this news is hot off the presses) but you can bet I'll be checking back frequently until I see it for myself!

Hot on the heels of this news, I realised that the final cover for the U.S. edition of Shadows on the Moon was up on the Amazon pre-order page. It's been up on various other websites for a while - NetGalley and Goodreads - but in a tiny thumbnail. Now, Candlewick had asked me not to put the artwork on my website until closer to the release date, so I've held back on that. But since we're now within a few months of U.S. publication, and the image is there in enlargeable form on both Amazon and the publisher's website, this seems as good a time as any for me to do a belated unveiling. So...

(Drumroll please!)

I know there's a lot of affection for the U.K. artwork (although I've seen some people dismiss it as generic too!) but I really love this. For a start - and believe me, I know how lucky I am! - there is No Racefail Here. The model is very beautiful, very Japanese, and has a flavour of that same mysterious Suzume expression which you see on the U.K. cover, and I adore that.

The most fabulous thing about this artwork, though, is the way that Suzume is fading away into the trees behind her, like a ghost, while at the same time luminous with a kind of fearsome beauty, her hair becoming a hood of shadow. The artist has captured something very important from the story: the idea that someone can project an image of beauty while their inner self is hidden or even dying. There's a great spookiness about this, too, which I like.

What do you guys think? And can anyone tell me how to get the larger image up on Goodreads when the thumbnail version is already there?