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September 4, 2011 by Travis Jonker

Link Du Jour: Top 10 Titles

September 4, 2011 by Travis Jonker   2 comments

I know we’re not supposed to judge books by their covers (although there’s no denying they play a role), but can we judge books by their titles? Is that more or less legitimate than cover appeal? In preparing for my fall preview post a couple weeks back, I came across two titles that stood out:

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Au Revoir Crazy European Chick by Joe Schreiber

How to Rock Braces and Glasses by Meg Haston

I enjoyed both so much that I put up a poll to determine which one readers liked the most. And the results are…

Au Revoir takes the cake!

The excellent children’s an YA blog Bookends recently wrote about their Top 10 Book Titles of 2011. I think the one that stands out most to me from their list is The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne M. Valente. Not likely to forget that any time soon. Did any of your favorites make the cut? Click the image below to read.

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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.

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Comments

  1. Elizabeth says

    September 4, 2011 at 2:30 pm

    The interesting fact about publishing nowadays is that in many cases (my own included) the author’s title is not the one that winds up on the book. Out of curiosity I’d love to know which of all of these titles (your two favorites, and the 10 best) were original to the working manuscript. Another interesting post would be to compare the authors’ working titles of various well-known books with the titles the publishers chose.

    • Travis says

      September 4, 2011 at 2:39 pm

      I love your idea, Elizabeth! I’ll have to fire up my investigating machine…

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