Titles

I've just been asked to come up with three alternate titles to a picture book manuscript. That started me thinking about titles in general. There's an old saying, "You can't judge a book by its cover", but there's not one saying, "You can't judge a book by its title." Titles are attention grabbers, or should be. I like titles that rhyme. For example, I published an article in Cricket Magazine with the title "How to Disguise a Nobel Prize" and a story in Shine brightly Magazine called "The Noon Raccoon". Alliteration is also a good choice. My first (and most successful) picture book is called "A Loon Alone". Wordplay can yield useful titles as well: "Forest Stranger", which appeared in Spider Magazine, is a pun on "forest ranger". Other good titles are ones which raise questions in the reader's mind.