That headline makes me feel positively Olympian. (I’ve been trying to get more exercise lately, anyway.) The Florida Book Awards for 2008 have been announced, although their web site may not have been updated quite yet. Missing Math: A Number Mystery has won the third place medal in the Children’s Literature category. Who knew that an artistically-inclined person like me would ever have anything to do with numbers?
The 9th grade guidance counselor had that serious-grown-up look when informed of my reason for not taking any more advanced classes in the subject: I will never go into any field that requires math. As an art major in college, that logic continued and no math classes appeared on my schedule. When my children’s book editor in the early 1990s suggested doing a picture book with a math theme, it was startling, to say the least. And yet...
I began thinking about my everyday activities as an author-illustrator, from bookkeeping to measuring layouts to estimating how long it would take to do an illustration. Apparently math was integral to my daily existence! If you’re a traditional quilter reading this, your geometry muscles get a work out on a regular basis, right?
The other ironically nice thing about math from an artistic standpoint is its abstract nature. The possible imagery one can use with a concept is up to the imagination. If multiplication can be paired with Halloween characters, why not? I made a list of terms such as counting, adding, subtracting, and so on, and have been working my way through them ever since. All the titles (so far) are here. Kids seem to like my visual approach to math, and hopefully they’ll have a more positive attitude about it than I did.
The idea of “taking math away” took several years to crystallize into the story told in the book. To read more about that little adventure in writing, click here. It appears that keeping an open mind and doing a few sit-ups now and then can really pay off!
Good advice, isn’t it? Whether it’s a book, a work of art, or a blog, if it’s worth creating it’s worth putting some effort into the title. Since my children’s books usually have some nonfiction content, the key word is usually somewhere in the title. If possible, it’s the first word. Case in point, Measuring Penny, which is about... measuring. It’s a pity for a book to have a vague title like Jamie’s Exciting Day when it could’ve been Jamie Finds a Pterodactyl, you know?Keep in mind how the title sounds out loud, as well as how it looks in writing. Some word combinations are tough to say, such as Rory’s Rural Romp. And in these digital days you may want to have a identical domain name, so that’s another consideration. A long title may not work well as a web site addy: www.purplilocksandthethreebumblebees.com is a tad long.
What about naming artwork? While some artists have taken the easy road by calling everything Untitled #X, an appropriate title can add something special to the viewer’s appreciation of a work. If all else fails, try opening up a dictionary or thesaurus with your eyes closed, or try this fun random word generator.
For a book it’s important to avoid a title that’s the same or too similar to an existing one. A few years ago there were three books with the title Amazing Grace, which led to a lot of confusion. Once I have some title ideas, off to Amazon I go to see if it’s already been used. I’ve saved myself a lot of hassle by doing this.
In fact, yesterday provided an especially ridiculous example... early last week my husband Andy and I had dinner with one of my editors (in town for a sales meeting.) In the course of the evening she asked us if we had any ideas for a new children’s picture book, and one scenario cracked us all up. (Andy had just thought of it the day before.) By the end of the week, the publisher had offered us a contract. Wow! But when I looked up the title online, not only had it already been used for a recent kid’s movie, it had the SAME animal characters and the SAME plot! It wasn’t a big movie or we would have heard of it, but people would naturally think we copied it. Another disaster averted. I would be more specific about the name, but we’ve rethought the whole thing and hopefully the publisher will like our new concept. I’ll let you know!
That headline makes me feel positively Olympian. (I’ve been trying to get more exercise lately, anyway.) The Florida Book Awards for 2008 have been announced, although their web site may not have been updated quite yet. Missing Math: A Number Mystery has won the third place medal in the Children’s Literature category. Who knew that an artistically-inclined person like me would ever have anything to do with numbers?
