Better yet: Silhouette

Silhouette image of
the esteemed
Jane Austen

Striking, versatile and fairly non-race specific: the silhouette. The term derives from a certain M. Etienne de Silhouette, an eighteenth century French finance minister who enjoyed making paper cutouts of profiles when perhaps he should have been coming up with better ways to raise funds for Louis XV than by taxing people's windows and French doors. He left office after eight months.

There are all kinds of uses for silhouettes nowadays, in photography, fashion, and even in military aircraft identification. (Click that link. Pretty pictures to look at.)

Weird fact: An anagram for M. Etienne de Silhouette is "the esteemed in outline."

What follow are a few choice examples of recent YA and children's book covers that use silhouettes.

Shutout by Brendan Halpin (FSG, 2010)

 Love how the soccer ball is red and white.

Bird in a Box by Andrea Davis Pinkney
(Little, Brown, release date: April 12, 2011)

Efrain's Secret by Sofia Quintero (Knopf, 2010)

A Most Improper Magick: The UNLadylike
Adventures of Kat Stephenson
by Stephanie Burgis, UK cover
(Templar, 2010)

If it's white, can it still be called a silhouette?

While we're thinking of it, here's the silhouette-less North American dust jacket for the same book (image from the author's website), retitled Kat, Incorrigible, due out in April, 2011:

Returning to the silhouette, little did Etienne know that his eponymous hobby would one day become an ad campaign image for Wyoming public libraries. To wit:

Mud flap girl, reading

Apparently, a very successful campaign. Wonder what she's reading.