Have you ever wondered how the cover for ‘Matched’ came about and what it symbolizes? Ally Condie had a chance to tell Melissa Walker all about it!

“I love my cover. It’s a beautiful piece of art and I feel incredibly lucky that such talented people worked on the project. I did find one little piece of hidden meaning that I didn’t notice at first. In the book, there are three important tablets that the characters take. The tablets are red, green, and blue. If you look closely at the bubble, you can see very subtle red, green, and blue highlights along the surface. I love that. I think the cover relates to the story in the book perfectly–Cassia is trapped in this beautiful, protective, but ultimately imprisoning world. And, in the end, it is a world that she can break, if she so chooses.”

Find out more at Melissa’s blog where you can find out exactly who modeled that green dress on the cover!

Special thanks to Krista at CubicleBlindness for letting us share this video from the book signing at The King’s English on December 4, 2010 with you!

BlurredHistory has a great interview up with Ally that asked a bunch of great new questions

The opening scene of your book describes the matching event, and Cassia has chosen a green dress to wear (which is also on the cover). Green is my favorite color and I love that dress – the story intimates that her choice of color says something about her, but what made you decide her dress should be green?

*I wanted Cassia’s dress to be green for a couple of reasons. One of the reasons is very superficial—I wanted it to match her eyes! More importantly, I also liked the symbolism of the color green and its traditional connections with growth, spring, etc. And finally, I liked that it had a connection with the green tablet, which is important to the story.

Check out BlurredHistory for the rest of the interview to find out where the pets are in Matched and a chance to win a copy of Matched!

Ally has confirmed our earlier post (located here)!

From her website:

CROSSED, the sequel to MATCHED, will be released November 1, 2011.

In Matched, Cassia and the people in The Society have very limited choices – which is part of what makes the dystopian world you’ve created such a scary place to read about. Why is the idea of freedom, specifically freedom of choice, such an important concept to readers? Especially to teen readers?

I think choice is important to all of us, but particularly when you’re young, you are in that strange place of being capable of choosing but often limited–by society, school, family–in which choices you are actually allowed to make. It’s a time of great personal growth and also very limited freedom, which feels constricting.

Visit Novel Novice for the rest of the interview with Ally where she discusses what caused Cassia to mature in “Matched” and a tiny bit of what we can expect in the sequel “Crossed”!

The Telegraph, a UK newspaper, has listed “Matched” by Ally Condie as one of the books to get for Christmas! Check out the rest of the list at The Telegraph.

I did what I could. I won’t lie–I worked very hard on this book and I care about it deeply. But it now belongs to my children, my parents, my husband, my sisters, my brother, the critique-readers, my agent, my editor, the designers, my publicist, the teachers, the librarians,the bloggers, the booksellers, and you.

It now belongs to you.

Read the rest of Ally’s thoughts about today on her official website.

Ally has updated her events page to let us know that she will be at two book release events!

Saturday, December 4, 2010
MATCHED LAUNCH PARTY
2:00 p.m.
The King’s English Bookshop
Salt Lake City, Utah

Tuesday, December 7, 2010
MATCHED BOOK PARTY
7:00 p.m.
Provo Library, Bullock Room
Provo, Utah

We’d love to hear back from people that go to these!

Today Novel Novice gives readers an introduction to “Matched”. Check out their site to read more here!

The Wall Street Journal recently reviewed Matched and gave the book nothing but good words! You can read Meghan Cox Gurdon’s review here