YA Book Covers: The Era of the Fancy Gowns

I don't know when it started, but I do know I began noticing it with the release of Wither, by Lauren DeStefano, in December of 2011, published by Simon and Schuster. Maybe it started before Wither, but this particularly beautiful cover, if not starting the trend, certainly took it to the next level.

Wither is a fantastic story, part of the Chemical Garden trilogy. Book 2, Fever, was released in February. I downloaded it to my Kindle and am excited to read it. If you want to know more about the Chemical Garden trilogy, my review of Wither.

But the point of this post is to highlight some of the other lovely covers I ran across just today as I was ordering books for the library. It seems like almost every book cover features a fancy gown. The covers below are from Harcourt's list, recommended for ages 12 and up.