If Your Life to Date Were a Children’s Book…

… what would the title be?

This was a question Peter H. Reynold posed to his workshop participants during last summer’s Southampton Children’s Literature Conference. Then he did something extraordinary.

Each of us came up with our title, and Peter then designed a Peter H. Reynolds book jacket around that title, and listing our name as the author.  He then made each one the cover of a blank book, which he gave to each of us, and invited us to fill in the pages.  What a gift – and a challenge!

Mine is standing on my writing desk, staring at me every day and inviting me to write. It’s a tremendous source of inspiration.  You can do something similar (OK, maybe not with a Peter H. Reynolds jacket – I know how lucky I am!).  Just buy a white book with blank pages (you can get them for about $3 each, here’s a link to one source: blank white books) and put your title idea for a Book-Not-Yet-in-Print on the cover, even if only in a nice font.  You don’t have to write on the book itself, you can print something out and paste it on. Then stand it up on your desk and let it stare at you for a while. You may be surprised by what it invites.