Here Baby, There Mama, Everywhere…

Daddy, Daddy there’s HAIR!

This is just a few examples of this year’s penchant for flying hair and hair that obscures faces. On The Girl With the Mermaid Hair by Delia Ephron (Balzer + Bray 2010), Blindsided by Priscilla Cummings (Dutton 2010), Keep Sweet by Michele Dominguez Greene (Simon Pulse 2010) and Raven Speak by Diane Lee Wilson (McElderry 2010) hair goes horizontal – usually something hair only does in wind. The raised up mermaid hair looks to be the result of spinning (look at where the hair on the other side goes). Blindsided could be wind… But the other two are not. Raven Speak holds a mishmash of things (an eye peeking through hair, a sword, a bird and a horse), put together in a way that is interesting enough, and slightly challenging in that you might not notice it right away.

So what does flying hair say? Without reading summaries… the spinning girl could indicate someone thrown off balance? On Blindsided the title and the Braille give pretty strong clues. But why does her hair obscure an eye, and show an eye that is most definitely looking at something?
Keep Sweet has the most unnatural arrangement. Why would one’s hair be wrapped around her face? On Raven Speak… she’s holding her braid over her nose?
Other notable examples for this year: Birth Marked by Caragh M. O’Brien, The Vinyl Princess by Yvonne Prinz, and Spyglass by Maria V. Snyder (the British cover doesn’t have the hair). Coming out in the fall, one with not so much the flying hair, but with hair covering parts of the face: The Frenzy by Francesca Lia Block. The first one like this that I saw was last year’s Breathless by Jessica Warman (Walker), but it stands alone in that year as far as I can tell.

UPDATE: See another post, with more hair at Stacked – Oh, Your Windswept Hair!

Girl With the Mermaid Hair: A vain teenaged girl is obsessed with beauty and perfection until she uncovers a devastating family secret. Ages 12+. Reviews 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
Blindsided: After years of failing eyesight, fourteen-year-old Natalie reluctantly enters a school for the blind, where in spite of her initial resistance she learns the skills that will help her survive in the sighted world. Ages 12+. Reviews 1, 2.
Keep Sweet: Alva, not quite fifteen, is content with the strict rules that define her life in Pineridge, the walled community where she lives with her father, his seven wives, and her twenty-nine siblings until she is caught giving her long-time crush an innocent first kiss and forced to marry a violent, fifty-year-old man. Ages 14+. Reviews 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
Raven Speak: In 854, the bold fourteen-year-old daughter of a Viking chieftain, aided by her old and thin but equally intrepid horse and an ancient, one-eyed seer, must find a way to keep her clan together and save them from starvation. Ages 10-14.