The Year of Shadows Cover Reveal Week Day 2: Exclusive Interviews with the Illustrator and Designer (& ARC Giveaway)

Today, we are thrilled to be a part of Middle Grade author Claire Legrand‘s Cover Reveal Blog Tour! We absolutely loved Claire’s first book, delightfully creepy MG horror novel The Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls, so were thrilled when we were contacted to host a spot on the cover reveal tour for her forthcoming book The Year of Shadows.

For our stop on the tour, we have the pleasure of hosting cover illustator Karl Kwansy, and Simon & Schuster art director Lucy Cummins – both Karl and Lucy give us their answers to some questions about the forthcoming book!

The Art

The official cover reveal goes down tomorrow, but today we can give you a sneak peek at some of the interior art for The Year of Shadows. Behold! The drafted interiors:

About The Year of Shadows

12-year-old Olivia Stellatella and her father have sold all their belongings to keep her father’s orchestra from going bankrupt. Now, they live out of suitcases in the back rooms of Emerson Hall, where the orchestra performs.

Olivia hates it there.

She hates her squeaky cot and shabby clothes. She hates her father, too, for being so obsessed with music that he drove Olivia’s mother out of the house and got them into this mess. Most of all, Olivia hates the orchestra. It’s the orchestra’s fault that her father’s the way he is. She can’t wait for it to fail.

Until the ghosts come.

They’re lonely, frightened, and stuck in our world. Only if Olivia and the 12-year-old usher, Henry, can help the ghosts solve the mysteries of their deaths — deaths that are somehow related to the Hall’s past — will they be able to move on and find peace. But time — and money — is running out. The mayor wants to bulldoze the Hall to the ground, which would put Olivia and her father out on the streets and trap the ghosts in our world permanently. And other ghosts — bad ones — will do anything to keep them here. As the “ghosts of Emerson Hall” craze sweeps the city, Olivia faces life-changing family secrets and must fight for her life when her world, and the world of Death, collide.

THE YEAR OF SHADOWS is a middle grade ghost story about loss, magic, music, and the power of friendship.

The book publishes in August 2013, with Simon & Schuster BYFR. Add it to your Goodreads shelf HERE.

The Interviews

4 Questions with Cover Illustator Karl Kwansy:

Q: Describe The Year of Shadows in three words.

Karl: A heartfelt adventure.

Q: What was your initial reaction after reading The Year of Shadows?

Karl: Simultaneously excited and daunted at the idea of working on the interior illustrations. It’s a fun story that manages to conjure up a lot of strong imagery.

Q: What did you use for inspiration when working on the design/illustrations for The Year of Shadows? Any particular music or images?

Karl: I wanted to make the characters very expressive, and the environments sort of wonky in a dynamic way. Emerson hall is a character unto itself, and I hope I was able to capture it. As for music, I’ve been enjoying listening to Shostakovich, Philip Glass, the Cloud Atlas soundtrack, and a couple of ambient musicians. Claire also put together a playlist featuring music that she listened to whilst writing the book, and it sets the mood brilliantly.

Q: Without giving anything away, who is your favorite character?

Karl: Igor, the curmudgeonly, deadpan cat. I tried to make him a little bit inadvertently comical in the illustrations. He’s certainly one of the highlights for me!

Find out more about Karl and his art on his website, monaux.com

5 Questions with S&S Art Director Lucy Cummins:

Q: Describe The Year of Shadows in three words.

Lucy: Girl Meets Ghost(s).

Q: What was your initial reaction after reading The Year of Shadows?

Lucy: My first feeling was the same as the first feeling I had after I read Cavendish Home—elated to be a part of a team that was making a seriously great read. And my second thought? I can’t wait to give this thing to my nieces. And my third thought? OMG I HOPE KARL KWASNY WANTS IN ON THIS. Oh and my fourth reaction? I had to get off the train at the wrong stop and double back—I seriously did board the wrong train while reading, and take it three stops before realizing my mistake. This, to me, is the highest compliment in the New York City subway reading experience!

Q: What did you use for inspiration when working on the design/illustrations for The Year of Shadows? Any particular music or images?

Lucy: The book is so evocative, visually — uniquely so. Claire has a way of building a world that’s so vivid, I feel like I could walk into the spaces she creates and move the furniture around, I can feel the temperature shift, I can see the dust and hear the echoes. This story at times felt like rain without an umbrella, but with light on the horizon.

The song that kept looping through my head the entire time I read it was—unimaginatively! — “Little Shadow” by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Mega goosebump-inducing! Seriously—just an infinite loop in my head of that track. (The regular release version, but actually? The acoustic version feels like a perfect curtain-down track for this novel.)

The reading demanded to be paired with Karl Kwasny’s artwork — Karl gets dark, but he’s also a master of the brighter side of things—I can barely imagine an another artist who could do justice to this book, and do so with maximum sensitivity and beauty. Everytime I’ve gotten a new piece of artwork for The Year of Shadows it’s felt like a gift, and it always feels like his work and Claire’s writing are on exactly the same page.

For the design elements throughout the pages, and for the other areas that I had a hand in, I definitely wanted everything to have a really classic feel, but with a twist. Refined, but creepy. And I wanted the pages to have a relationship to the subject matter, too—to feel welcome in the music hall. One of the touches I’m most proud of is the fermata marks that serve as the line spacers within the reading—literally pauses.

Q: Without giving anything away, who is your favorite character?

Lucy: It’s all about Igor for me—I love his perspective, I love what he adds, and I just want to scratch his scruffy little chin. BUT. My goodness. I am/was SUCH an Olivia. Everything about that character felt relatable and true to how I felt a lot of times at Olivia’s age, and I still have erm…shades…of Olivia to this day.

Q: What can fans of The Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls expect from this second novel? How is it similar? How is it different?

Lucy: I think fans will find another fantastically crafted story with lots of twists and turns, great visuals, and a fantastic, creepy sense of humor that’s very much akin to the reading experience of Cavendish. I think there’s something slightly more modern and relatable about Olivia’s world, though. And holy cow—if Igor could make cameos in every Legrand…erm…tail…from now on? I wouldn’t begrudge!

Lucy Ruth Cummins is an Art Director with Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers and Paula Wiseman Books where she works on a range of titles from picture books to young adult novels. You can find out more about her and her art on her website lucyruthcummins.com.

The Giveaway

The following items are up for grabs:

• two Karl Kwasny prints
• one Karl Kwasny ORIGINAL
• three film scores that Claire listened to when writing The Year of Shadows (your choice!), including:
• Phoebe in Wonderland
• Where the Wild Things Are (soundtrack by Karen O)
• Where the Wild Things Are (score by Carter Burwell)
• Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
• The Year of the Dog
• Lars and the Real Girl
• and . . . an ARC!

You can comment on each day’s post— yesterday’s, today’s and Thursday’s — for a chance to win, but each entrant is only eligible to win one prize each. This contest is U.S./Canada only, begins TODAY, and ends next Thursday, February 7th. Winners will be announced later that day (and winners of the film scores will get to choose which score they want from a list). Good luck!

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