Noa Wheeler, Henry Holt Books for Young Readers editor and Manhattan bicycle daredevil, and whom I suspect would have let me name the book anything I wanted, occasionally tweets her favorite title of the day, and What We Found in the Sofa recently made the cut. Had the book been named Never Moon a Werewolf, I can’t help but think it might have received the honor sooner...
Never Moon a Werewolf was my second choice for the title of What We Found in the Sofa and How it Saved the World, after the much pithier Hellsboro, but my editor pointed out there are no werewolves in the book, and nobody moons anybody, so I had to settle for Never Moon a Werewolf becoming the title of Chapter 15, the chapter most thoroughly devoid of both werewolves and mooning. (What We Found in the Sofa and How It Saved the World was my forty-third choice for the book’s title, by the way.) Noa Wheeler, Henry Holt Books for Young Readers editor and Manhattan bicycle daredevil, and whom I suspect would have let me name the book anything I wanted, occasionally tweets her favorite title of the day, and What We Found in the Sofa recently made the cut. Had the book been named Never Moon a Werewolf, I can’t help but think it might have received the honor sooner... Someday I may write a book called Never Moon, a Werewolf, about a native American lycanthrope. Then again, maybe not.
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The headline sounds impressive. At first glance, it suggests the book has sold a million copies, or made a million dollars. All it really means is, someone has pre-ordered a single copy of What We Found in the Sofa and How It Saved the World from Amazon.com and moved the book very briefly from where it was yesterday – at position 3,751,233, right between Fletch Your Own Arrows and How To Make Hats Out of Pork – to a position within Amazon’s list of top million sellers.
I know from experience that over the next few days, the book’s position will slowly creep back to 3,751,233. And then I’ll have to order another copy. Yes, Publishers Weekly’s Silly Superlatives were given out last week, and What We Found in the Sofa and How It Saved the World won in the coveted Best Motivation for Furniture Destruction category, an unheard-of honor for a debut novel. The six other books nominated in this category -
The Ottoman That Ate Detroit The Lawn Chairs are Trouncing My Cousin Leon (translated from the Ukrainian) How To Train Your Footstool Night of the Living Bed Suzie Swallowed the Hassock Again! and Celebrity Love Seat: My Life on the Red Carpet – made for some fierce competition. (I feel bad about the way the fashionistas trashed the Love Seat just for wearing a see-through plastic slipcover. The Love Seat was expecting company; what did you expect her to wear? Lighten up.) The winner of the first Silly Superlative back in 1977 was Taro Gomi’s Everybody Poops, and the award trophy was designed with that book in mind. It is not a trophy one is eager to display on one’s bookshelf. |
Henry ClarkPictured here on the day he sold What We Found in the Sofa. His mood is cautiously optimistic. Archives
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