Free Author visit « Nerdy Chicks Rule

This contest is officially over. Winners announced on October 10. Thanks everyone! 🙂

Authors don’t design the covers of their books. Cover art is usually conceived by in-house book designers and I am very very lucky that the designer Scholastic assigned to my books is Whitney Lyle. Whitney has done an amazing job with both covers! And I love the way the second cover, the one you are about to see, compliments the first. I asked Whitney to share a little about how she came up with these cover designs. Here is what she said:

I loved the cover creation process for both The Boy Project and The Boy Problem! The story reminded me so much of my crafty, boy-crazy, methodical self back at Robert Frost Middle School! I had notebooks with lists of boys, slam books that I shared with my best friends, and boxes full of ticket stubs, fortune cookie slips, and notes.

Back when we started working on The Boy Project, we considered several directions that the cover could take, but in the end we decided to make the cover feel like a journal because it would fit the story really well. I looked to my old notebooks as inspiration, making a collage of elements that fit the story.

For The Boy Problem, we thought that some of the doodles should allude to the story, so I drew several pages of equations, Magic 8 Balls, fortune cookies, cupcakes, and shooting stars and narrowed them down to what looked best. I also looked for silhouettes of different boys to place on the sticky notes. We wanted to find different stereotypes (the jock, the romantic, the life of the party).

Thanks Whitney! It turned out great!

So… now time for the drumroll… here is the cover for THE BOY PROBLEM! I’m so excited about it that I’m doing a giveaway. Make sure to scroll down to the end of the post for details.

Isn’t that great? I especially like the way the post-it notes used here compliment the index card found on the cover of my first book. You can see more of Whitney Lyle’s fabulous work HERE.

Now, those of you who’ve kept up with what’s going on with this book might notice a really big change on the cover that you weren’t expecting. See it? Yep, in the past two weeks we’ve undergone a title change! So now The Boy Prediction is The Boy Problem! (But we managed to work the word prediction in anyway, so don’t worry, you’ll still get your fill of 8 balls, fortune cookies and the like).

Let’s go on to the contest, shall we? Sudipta’s virtual visit giveaways were so popular last spring that I thought I’d try one too.

IN CELEBRATION OF THIS FABULOUS COVER, I will be giving away a free 30-minute Virtual Classroom Visit, where I would be happy to tell your chosen class all about how this book came together, and answer questions about being an author. (Don’t worry if you’re not a teacher — you can donate the Virtual Visit to any class you choose! Or I’ll send you one of my new signed paperbacks of The Boy Project instead.)

Entries will be accepted until October 9, 2013. The winner will be selected using the random number generator at random.org and announced on October 10.

Here are the rules for this giveaway. It’s super-easy:

The ONLY thing that is Required is to enter your name and email address in the form below. This is so I can reach you. Email addresses will not be published.

If you want to enter multiple times, keep reading. This is optional! You will get an extra entry for doing any of the following:

(1) leave me a comment here with your thoughts on the cover.

(2) follow me on Twitter – mention that in a comment below. (You can follow from the right sidebar too.)

(3) tweet this post to your own Twitter followers and tag me @kamikinard in the tweet.

(4) like fellow blogger Sudipta’s author page on Facebook – mention that in a comment below.

(5) follow this blog (right sidebar) — mention that in a comment below.

or (6) like my Facebook author page – mention that in a comment below.