Many years ago (almost eleven, I think?), I went to a workshop at The Writing Barn in Austin, Texas, and Jenny Han critiqued the beginning of an epistolary story I was writing. Yep, the Jenny Han.
This was before any of her books became Netflix shows, but the whole Summer I Turned Pretty series had already been published, and the first Lara Jean book was out, too. She wasn’t quite as big a deal as she is now, but she was already wildly accomplished and one of my students’ favorite authors, so I was pretty starstruck. And when she critiqued my pages? Deep down, I was secretly hoping she’d be so impressed by them that she’d offer to stay in touch and blurb the book when it came out some day as she was certain it would. Instead, she (nicely) told me the format wasn’t working and maybe I should scrap the emails and start from scratch.
Ouch! But she was right about that story. As I explained in my last newsletter, I’ve wanted to write a novel in emails, letters, and other formats for a long time, but for that particular manuscript, I didn’t have a premise that matched the structure. After Jenny’s feedback, I sharpened the hook and started over with one main character and a more straightforward first-person narrative, and the book was better for it.1
But Jenny said something else during that critique that has stuck with me ever since. She said one challenge with epistolary novels is that it’s hard to incorporate visual descriptions, and epistolary stories don’t tend to be her favorites because she’s a visual person. She said she wanted to know what my characters’ bedrooms looked like and all sorts of other visual details that are difficult to weave in when a story is made up of emails and text messages.
It’s a really good point, and something I had to think about while writing Where Ella Went. I had to figure out how to incorporate a variety of formats that would fit within the narrative frame I was establishing but also include immersive, sensory storytelling—that was one of the biggest challenges I faced!
And Jenny Han’s insight also made me realize: unlike her, I am not a visual person. I’m a very auditory person, and maybe that’s why epistolary and multimedia stories are some of my favorites. I don’t always see scenes playing out in my head when I write or read them, but I always hear them. Character voices come to me first, and dialogue comes most naturally. Epistolary and multimedia stories might be a little lighter on visual descriptions, but the characters’ voices really shine, which is probably why I love them so much.2
Being much more auditory than visual also means that I rarely have any ideas about what my book covers should look like. Authors aren’t responsible for designing their own book covers (thank goodness!)—there’s a whole team of people at the publisher, including a designer and often an outside illustrator, who take the lead on that. But authors are often asked for their input . . . and I tend to seek out a lot of other, more visually oriented people’s input before I provide mine.
A while back–after I’d turned in the first draft of Where Ella Went but before I’d gotten revision notes–my editor asked me to send descriptions of the main characters and any cover inspiration I had, because the team was starting to think about covers. I didn’t have a lot of specific inspiration, but I did have my critique partner Cordelia Jensen3, who had just read a draft and had lots of brilliant thoughts. And I also had access to a bunch of readers right in the target age range for the book, because they were my students!
I showed a group of very insightful sixth graders my initial description of the book and asked what they thought the cover for that book could look like. They had all sorts of great ideas that largely matched up with Cordelia’s. They thought the cover should definitely have a soccer ball, and maybe soccer players in uniform. Maybe Ella’s #13 jersey could be off to the side somewhere or there could be something like a yearbook photo of the missing girl with her face covered up by a soccer ball? Some way to convey that Ella was gone…but not in a scary way.
I showed them the covers of two books I saw as comp titles, What Happened to Rachel Riley and Dress Coded, and they agreed those were great. Same with the cover of Brigit Young’s The Prettiest. They liked the colors, they said. And it helped that we couldn’t see the characters’ faces.
Many of them said illustrated faces were the most likely thing to turn them off of a book cover because the characters often look too young. So the appeal of covers featuring characters’ backs makes sense, or characters’ silhouettes, as in the cover for Paula Chase’s Turning Point. Or their feet, as in Ali Terese’s Free Period! It also makes sense that many of my students loved text heavy covers like the ones for Not If You Break Up with Me First and Murray Out of Water. The covers of Debbi Michiko Florence’s Keep It Together, Keiko Carter and Just Be Cook, Jenna Sakai, which feature a photograph with an adorable background, also continue to be favorites.
But they did gravitate toward some covers that feature illustrated faces. Some recent favorites (that are generally in the vein of my realistic contemporary books and that I can remember right now) were Barbara Dee’s Tear This Down, Claire Swinarski’s Take It from the Top, Brigit Young’s Banned Books, Crop Tops, and Other Bad Influences, Erin Becker’s Crushing It, Yamile Saied Mendez’s The Beautiful Game, and Julia DeVillers’s Meet Me at Wonderland. My takeaways from those illustrated-face-including favorites are that middle school readers didn’t want the illustrations to look too young and they wanted interesting colors, action, and intrigue.
I passed all those insights on to my editor, and then I hoped for the best. And the cover concept that the team at Abrams and the artist, Caroline Garcia-Pereira created? It absolutely blew me away.
First I got a cover sketch in the spring. It was in black and white without a lot of detail, but I could tell the concept was awesome. I got to show my students, who agreed that the idea was fabulous, and then I provided the team at my publisher with more character descriptions, since the cover featured secondary characters in addition to the main ones, as well as ideas for things like how the soccer players’ hair should be styled, how the goalie should be dressed, and a couple of other important characters we might want to include even though they aren’t on the team (the two boys that I’m so pleased to have on the cover because I love them!).
A couple months later, I got to see much more polished versions in three different color combinations and weigh in again on things like what the ball should look like, which font and uniform colors I liked best, and the characters’ hair length and skin tones. And then the final version arrived, and it was SPECTACULAR.
I’m lucky to have had some great covers, but I think this is my favorite one yet. I love the colors. I love that it captures so much of what the book is about and conveys that it’s a mystery but not a scary, thriller-y mystery. And I love how clear it is that soccer features prominently. My students’ feedback made me wary of illustrated faces and this has a LOT of illustrated faces but they are so perfectly done and so intriguing, especially in conjunction with how Ella is depicted! The cover artist is Caroline Garcia-Pereira, and the designers for the cover and book are Micah Fleming and Veronica Wang.
I’m so grateful for the care that the whole Abrams team has put into getting this cover right. I can’t wait to show my former students how it turned out once school starts up again, and I’m so excited to show you right now! Here it is in all its glory, followed by the official description.
Where Ella Went comes out April 14, 2026, but you can preorder now. Let me know what you think of the cover and description, and please share any questions you have about the cover process or the book! I’d love to answer some questions in a future newsletter.
Love, Laurie
A clever, funny multimedia mystery from author Laurie Morrison, about soccer teammates trying to solve the disappearance of their beloved team captain—and facing a few secrets of their own
Why did Ella leave?
Eighth graders Sadie and Pug don’t have anything in common except for their love of soccer and their loyalty to Ella, the overachieving team captain. So when Ella doesn’t show up for the most important game of the season and her parents pull her out of school, Sadie and Pug are determined to find out what happened, even though they don’t usually get along. There’s no way Ella abandoned the team!
But as Sadie and Pug dig deeper, they begin to realize that Ella’s life wasn’t as perfect as it seemed. And maybe Sadie and Pug have a few secrets that need to come to light, too. Maybe all their classmates do…
Told in recordings, letters, texts, journal entries, and emails, Where Ella Went is a funny and absorbing slice-of-life mystery about friendship, teamwork, and the pressures of being in middle school. If Sadie and Pug keep searching for answers, they risk sabotaging the end of their soccer season. But can they ever move on if they don’t learn the truth? And what if Ella needs them even more than they need her?
That book was a YA rom-com that was my third out of three books that went on submission and garnered a bit of editor interest but ultimately didn’t sell. But that book did lead my now longtime editor Maggie Lehrman to ask if I had any other projects, which led my agent to send her Every Shiny Thing, and we’ve been working together ever since!
See my last newsletter for some of my favorite voice-driven epistolary/multimodal novels!
In addition to having very good ideas about book covers, Cordelia is also a beautiful verse novelist. She is my co-author for Every Shiny Thing, and she has a lovely new middle grade verse novel called Lilac and the Switchback coming out NEXT WEEK! I predict middle schoolers will love the cover because the colors are gorgeous and you can’t really see Lilac’s face. A proven winning combo! :)
It looks so good, Laurie!
Ooh!!! I get what your students mean about illustrated faces, but these look their age! Awesome!