The Newbery Title Frankenstein
There’s a post right up my alley over at A Fuse #8 Production today. It’s about how certain book titles sound more Newbery-ish than others. Betsy puts forth a few Newbery-sounding titles and challenges readers to do the same.
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
It made me wonder which words appear most often in the titles of Newbery Medal winning books.
So I decided to find out.
I entered all the titles from Newbery Medal winners into Wordle, a word cloud generator. The more appearances of a word, the larger the font.
(click to enlarge)
As you can see, there are a few words that stand out:
- King
- Road
- Cross
- Summer
- Cat
- Hill
- Mr.
- Mrs.
So, knowing that, here is my title:
Mr. and Mrs. Cross and the Cat King of Summer Hill Road
Summary: Mr. and Mrs. Cross move to a new house on Summer Hill Road and encounter a clan of feral cats with a mysterious leader.
Filed under: Articles
About Travis Jonker
Travis Jonker is an elementary school librarian in Michigan. He writes reviews (and the occasional article or two) for School Library Journal and is a member of the 2014 Caldecott committee. You can email Travis at scopenotes@gmail.com, or follow him on Twitter: @100scopenotes.
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
SLJ Blog Network
Cover Reveal and Q&A: Dusti Bowling’s Latest – The Beat I Drum (Apr 2025)
Girlmode | Review
The Seven Bills That Will Safeguard the Future of School Librarianship
Take Five: Newbery Picks, Part Two
Gayle Forman Visits The Yarn!
ADVERTISEMENT
Carter Higgins says
I would read that.
Philip Nel says
Brilliant! This sounds exactly like a Newbery-winning title from, say, 1966. Also: someone should write this book.
Travis Jonker says
That’s the next step – any takers out there?
Joseph Miller says
Great post! Love how you always come up with these insights.
Best Wishes,
Joseph
Stacy says
Nice one. Love those titles with “summer” in them!
tommfranklin says
I would definitely read that!