I think on balance I prefer the 606D series (Well-loved tales) - to which my two-year old son is now being introduced - primarily on account of all the spanking that goes on in the defective animals series. It reaches quite disturbing levels in the case of Mick the Disobedient Puppy. I'm not sure if all that sunshine quite compensates for the sado-masochistic overtones...

It was probably the ubiquitous pipe-smoking that raised aggression levels. (I'll stop going on about LBs now, as I could talk all day, and once I get started on Wonks and Tasseltips, you'll never shut me up.)

Having learnt to read in America, largely on Dr Seuss and Richard Scarry, I'm feeling ever so out of this conversation... But I do remember older LB books - the history ones.

Emma

Richard Scarry's stuff is great! I was fascinated by Lowly Worm as a kid. Don't know much about Dr Seuss unfortunately.

Great site, Lammi. They even have a parody section

http://www.ladybirdflyawayhome.com/pages/parody.htm

The site's by the lady who designed my website. She's lovely.

Titles are Bastards.


That's the title of a book I'm planning to write on how hard it is to think up titles, by the way.

Good title!

I expect the publisher will choose their own title for it anyway.
Maybe it should just be called 'Yay It's Been Accepted!'

I hit on

After the Crash

(provisionally) for my effort, while retrieving my bike from outside the local supermarket. Sounds quite good at the moment - at least it tells the reader there's going to be a crash, which is something - but will probably come to lose faith in it as time goes on.

In my experience, it's all a waste of time and emotional energy, RJH. The eventual title will be chosen in a brainstorming meeting of the marketing team. Your editor will be present, but nobody else in the room will even have read the book. And crying down the phone to show how much you are out of tune with what they have chosen will get you precisely nowhere.

Having a catchy working title is handy for grabbing an agent's attention. But whatever you do, don't get too wedded to it. Authors don't get to decide these things.

Rosy

<Added>

Though, for what it's worth, I really like 'After the Crash'.

Ah, words of bitter experience - or so it sounds...

Well, if the title helps get an agent's attention it'll have served its initial purpose. And if I ever get as far as having a novel being seriously considered by a publisher I might well be inclined to take a very pliant approach to choice of title. In fact, the main reason I'm worrying about it now is that I find it vaguely disconcerting to be 58,000 words into the draft of a novel that doesn't even have a name. I can't keep on calling it 'new novel' forever.

After the Crash does have the virtue of focusing my mind on what the thing's supposed to be about.

I'm struggling with this right now.

99% of the time, the title comes to me in the very early stages of an idea, and it sticks. But this time - when it's a book that someone actually wants to publish - I can't get beyond the boring working title. I've tried looking for phrases from the novel itself, from other works, played with alliterative/rhythm-y titles...and nothing works. In a way, I'd quite like my editors to suggest something...but I'm worried that that might seem rather lame to them: an author who can't come up with a title for her own work! Grrr...

Bitter, moi? (Tee hee.)

Actually, the experience of having an unwanted title foisted on me for book 1 freed me from feeling the need to have one in my head at all for book 2 - and in fact when it was done and accepted the one we went with just popped into my head - and they liked it, so it stuck. I think, actually, some titles which authors choose are good and work in marketing as well as artistic terms, and do stick (and in literary fiction I think this is the pattern far more than in commercial, where marketing is all). But I have other author friends who've also had titles they loved (and which were centrally tied up in their minds with the identity of their book) scrapped in favour of ones they've felt uncomfortable with. So just be warned, in case you fall desperately in love with your title, that's all!

Rosy

i find it fairly easy to come up with chapter headings and fairly hard to come up with novel titles, so for my last book (Ways to Live Forever) I just stole the chapter heading i liked the best and used that.

I don't usually have a title until right at the very end though. I have a whole list of titles that i hate and i try them all out one by one and none of them fits and i get more and more frustrated until eventually i find one that i like enough to stay.

i would recommend having at least a working title though. it gives the book a bit more shape in your head.