Bring Out the Vote

Boy oh boy. Mitali Perkins enjoys the voting process. First she had us all weigh in on how often we read a book before declaring some sort of opinion about it. And now her fictional character Sameera Righton is giving us a chance to vote on the name for the second book in the First Daughter series. Your choices? First Daughter: White House Rules versus First Daughter: White House Rant. I am, as you might have suspected, firmly in the rant camp. Now go and do that thing you do; that thing you do so well.

Titular (tee hee) Importance

We all know how you're not supposed to judge a book by its cover. But I think that's one of those rules you ignore out of a sense of self-preservation more than anything else. So what about titles? If you glance at something and it has a title that bores the pants off of you/does nothing in the pulse stirring department, does that mean you won't pick up that book even for a gander?

It would be worse if you were the kind of author who couldn't even begin a book until you selected its name. Says Maxim Jakubowski in his recent Guardian piece What's in a novel's name, "I'm not sure how important they are, but I can't even begin to write until I've settled on a title." I wonder if this is a widespread problem. Names in kidlit rarely strike me as particularly awful or bizarre. Pretentious titles are another matter entirely.

Thanks to Bookninja for the link.

New Blog?

By all accounts there appears to be a new blog in town. I was sifting through my Galleycat and found the following bit o' info regarding Publisher's Weekly's revamped website; "The jury's still out on the other blogs, though Alison Morris's "ShelfTalker" can no doubt feed into the growing children's lit blog presence and market."

Growing kidlit blog presence? Why that applies to me!

So I hopped on over and saw that this Alison Morris person writes mighty well. Mighty. She has a piece (only one) in which she discusses the weird trend currently going on where publishers will change not just the cover but the NAME of a youth novel when it goes from hardcover to paperback.

The three novels I’ve recently purchased for our store that were apparently (in the eyes of their publishers) lamed by their own names are: Naughts and Crosses by Malorie Blackman, now appearing in paperback as Black and White; Gideon the Cutpurse by Linda Buckley-Archer, soon to appear in paperback as The Time Travelers; and Olivia Kidney and the Exit Academy by Ellen Potter, coming soon to a bookshelf near you as a paperback entitled Olivia Kidney Stops for No One.

Woah woah woah woah. They're renaming Gideon the Cutpurse? Children, if you didn't read that book last year it was one of the finest children's fantasies of 2006. Beautiful cover too (we'll forgive Ms. Morris for putting it down). This trend seriously disturbs me to the core of my soul and I didn't even know it was going on. And that, in essence, is why a Publisher's Weekly kidlit blog is going to turn out to be mighty important. Let's all keep our eye on this one for a while, shall we?

Thanks to Galleycat for the link.