New York illustrator Lisa Falkenstern is working on illustrations for her new children’s picture book. But she and her editor are having trouble deciding on the perfect name for it.
Lisa's Baby Dragon
And so she’s asking readers of How To Be A Children’s Book Illustrator to help her out! Help her choose the best name. Because she knows that the title is the most important decision an author and or/her publisher probably will make on any given book. Titles rule. Good titles sell the book. Blah or dumb titles seal their doom.
View This Pollonline survey
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Lisa has staked out several firsts here. It’s the first first picture book that she has authored.
It’s the first time that this blog has been asked for help by an artist colleague. And it’s the first official reader poll that this blog has ever conducted.
How did the dragon story come about?
Lisa: Long story. I keep a file of images that give me ideas for illustrations. I had a photo of an antique silver eggcup that had chick feet sticking out of a realistically done egg. I liked that and when I got around to working on the idea, the chick became a dragon and lost the claws. It didn’t work. then I played around with the egg and it became an Easter egg. So now I had a portfolio piece.
At that time, while attending a New Jersey SCBWI [Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators] meeting, a friend and I were invited to join another writing group, the Hunterdon County Children’s Writers and Illustrators. We did and it was my husband who suggested I turn that dragon painting into a story. I did and when I showed up for a first meeting, to my everlasting shame, I showed up with a story called The Easter Dragon. I worked on that and got a dummy ready for an SCBWI workshop. I showed it to an agent and he pointed out that it wasn’t an Easter story, it was a dragon and bunny story. I went back to work on it, took out Easter, added a hedgehog to the characters, showed it to the same agent and he wasn’t interested.
Not deterred, I kept working on it and finally showed it to the publisher at Marshall Cavnedish at an SCBWI conference who liked it, but had suggestions. About four revisions later, she liked it enough to buy it.
All that from a photo of an egg cup!
You could always test your title with the “Lulu Titlescorer”. Enter your title and some info and wham-o, it tells you how likely that title is to be a best seller!
http://www.lulu.com/titlescorer/