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books

“The Girl” In The Title

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No one denies that “The Girl” or “A Girl” or “The Girls” in book titles are a thing and have been a thing for a while. But what hasn’t been done, at least not that I’ve seen, is a big list of those particular titles.

In honor of a trend I am hoping goes away because it offers no insight to a story. While it’s not the authorial intent when such a title is selected (and note, often, especially in YA, authors don’t choose their titles), such a bland word makes girls’ stories all blend together to the point they’re indistinguishable. To the point the individuality of female characters are denied, sometimes, entirely.

It’s time to make a list.

Here are the parameters: the titles need to include “the girl” or “a girl” or “girls” in some capacity. I pulled the titles from Goodreads YA book lists starting with this year’s 2017 titles and working back to 2014, when the trend really began picking up steam. I’ve left out book titles where “girl” is an extension in a subtitle, so, Gabi, A Girl in Pieces doesn’t count because we know exactly who the girl in question is.

And I’m putting them in a straight list by title and without author. Without descriptions, how many of books call out to you? How many would you race to pick up if you knew nothing about them? How many would you pick up without an author name attached? How many would confuse you to no end?

It’s my hope that by seeing how abundant this is, it also becomes clear how and why it’s a problematic trend and one that many of us are eager to see go away. In isolation and by individual titles, there’s not really anything worth noting. But just reading down this list of titles, well, it’s hard not to have a long pause.

Girls are objects.

Enjoy!

 

2017:

  • A Map for Wrecked Girls
  • A Psalm for Lost Girls
  • Brave New Girl
  • Girl Out of Water
  • The November Girl
  • Lost Girls
  • The Gallery of Unfinished Girls
  • Fat Girl on a Plane
  • The Girl With The Red Balloon
  • Girls Made of Snow and Glass
  • Who’s That Girl?
  • Nowhere Girls
  • Girl On The Verge
  • Just Another Girl
  • Just A Girl
  • The Hollow Girl
  • The Girl Who Wouldn’t Die
  • Beautiful Broken Girls
  • A Short History of the Girl Next Door
  • Dead Little Mean Girl
  • What Girls Are Made Of
  • Lucky Girl
  • Such A Good Girl
  • Neighborhood Girls
  • Factory Girl
  • Rosie Girl
  • The Football Girl
  • The Hanging Girl
  • Girls Can’t Hit
  • The Girl Between
  • Things A Bright Girl Can Do

 

 

2016:

  • Girl Against The Universe
  • The Girl From Everywhere
  • The Girl Who Fell
  • Dead Girls Society
  • If I Was Your Girl
  • I’m Not Your Manic Pixie Dream Girl
  • The Last Boy and Girl In The World
  • Girl Last Seen
  • Genesis Girl
  • Girl in Pieces
  • Shattered Girls
  • Girl in the Blue Coat
  • Beware That Girl
  • Girl Mans Up
  • American Girls
  • The Marked Girl
  • Nice Girls Endure
  • Any Other Girl
  • Scar Girl
  • Good Girls Don’t Lie
  • The Girl I Used To Be
  • Girls Like Me
  • The Girl In The Picture
  • Girl About Town
  • The Girl in a Coma
  • Girls In The Moon
  • Local Girl Swept Away
  • Tragedy Girl
  • Songs About A Girl
  • The Art of Picking Up Girls

 

 

2015:

  • Vanishing Girls
  • The Girl at Midnight
  • Jesse’s Girl
  • Slasher Girls & Monster Boys
  • Suicide Notes from Beautiful Girls
  • Conspiracy Girl
  • A School for Unusual Girls
  • The Good Girls
  • Weird Girl and What’s His Name
  • Honey Girl
  • Othergirl
  • The Girl at the Center of the World
  • Material Girls
  • Girl of Shadow
  • The Lost Girls
  • A Girl’s Story
  • The Dead Girls of Hysteria Hall
  • Girl Online On Tour
  • Those Girls
  • About A Girl
  • Gypsy Girl
  • Red Girl, Blue Boy
  • The Guy, The Girl, The Artist, and His Ex
  • Girl Online
  • Strange Girl
  • Boarding School Girls
  • A Girl Undone
  • Burn Girl
  • The Hired Girl
  • Girl At The Bottom of the Sea
  • Girl On A Plane
  • Hollowgirl

 

 

2014

  • The Girl From The Well
  • The Almost Girl
  • The Girl With The Windup Heart
  • A Girl Called Fearless
  • The Girl Who Never Was
  • Girl In Reverse
  • Mafia Girl
  • Push Girl
  • The Vanishing Girl
  • Girl Nevermore
  • Dead Girls Walking
  • Two Girls Staring At The Ceiling
  • Girl Defective
  • Girls Like Us
  • Lost Girl Found
  • Girl On A Wire
  • Running Girl

 

Night Gardens

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Frequently while paging through catalogs and reviewing book lists from vendors, I’ll notice a title that sounds familiar. The latest is “night garden” and its variations, prompted by my sighting of The Night Gardener by Terry and Eric Fan, a picture book being published by Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers on February 16. This immediately made me think of the middle grade book by the same title by Jonathan Auxier as well as Barbara Joosse’s picture book In the Night Garden. Turns out there’s a whole host of books for kids and adults that use this phrase in its title, as you’ll see below. Descriptions are all via WorldCat.

night garden for kids

The Night Gardener by Jonathan Auxier (middle grade fiction)

Irish orphans Molly, fourteen, and Kip, ten, travel to England to work as servants in a crumbling manor house where nothing is quite what it seems to be, and soon the siblings are confronted by a mysterious stranger and secrets of the cursed house.

The Night Gardener by Terry and Eric Fan (picture book)

Everyone on Grimloch Lane enjoys the trees and shrubs clipped into animal masterpieces after dark by the Night Gardener, but William, a lonely boy, spots the artist, follows him, and helps with his special work.

In the Night Garden by Barbara Joosse (picture book)

Three friends play in a garden and in the bath before bedtime, each one imagining herself a different animal.

night garden for adults

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt (adult nonfiction)

In charming, beautiful, and wealthy old-South Savannah, Georgia, the local bad boy is shot dead inside of the opulent mansion of a gay antiques dealer, and a gripping trial follows.

The Night Gardener by George Pelecanos (adult fiction)

When the body of a local teenager turns up in a community garden, veteran homicide detective Gus Ramone teams up with T.C. Cook, a legendary, now retired detective, and Dan “Doc” Holiday, his former partner who left the force under a cloud of suspicion.

In the Night Garden by Catherynne M. Valente (adult fiction)

A lonely girl with a dark tattoo across her eyelids made up of words spelling out countless tales unfolds a fabulous, recursive Arabian Nights-style narrative of stories within stories in this first of a new fantasy series from Valente. The fantastic tales involve creation myths, shape-changing creatures, true love sought and thwarted, theorems of princely behavior, patricide, sea monsters, kindness and cruelty.

The Night Garden by Lisa Van Allen (adult fiction)

In the Pennywort, there is a garden of edible flowers, a garden meant for touching, and one in which the flowers only bloom at night. Since her mother’s death 5 years ago, Olivia has been carrying on her legacy, caring for Pennywort Gardens and running an informal program that provides safe haven to women in exchange for their help with the lush gardens. The townspeople hate having what they call a ‘halfway house’ around, and Olivia’s neighbors are convinced she’s using more than her allotment of water in a drought year, and keep calling the police. But Olivia has secrets of her own and needs everyone to just keep their distance.

On Books Changing Titles

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Cover changes can be hit or miss for me. Sometimes, the redesigns are worlds better than the original and other times, the change doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense. That’s why I love thinking about and writing about those changes — who will the new look appeal to? Does it better reflect the story? 

But one thing I can say I almost universally dislike is a title change. 
Titles are a marketing tool in YA. It’s what can grab a reader immediately. If you spend any time looking through author Q&As, you’ll see many of them talk about title changes that happened well before the book went to press. A number of authors have mentioned they’ve never once named a book themselves. 
So when a title changes, it’s most likely because it wasn’t selling well. The change in title, like the change in cover image, is an attempt to grab new reader attention in a way the original concept did not. 
But for anyone who works in a library or who works with readers in a bookstore, classroom, or similar situation, a title change is a big pain in the ass. Did you order the book already? Will readers be asking for one title and then be disappointed when they’re handed a book with a different one? While there are ways to indicate a title change — you see it on the cover itself and in most library catalog systems, there’s a line you can add for it — it’s not a change that’s necessarily beneficial to readers themselves. 
I know sometimes when an older title comes back into print, the title change can spark a new interest (especially with combined with a fresh cover). But over the last couple of years, it seems there have been a number of YA books getting the title change treatment when a book goes from its original hardcover to paperback. It’s getting sort of challenging to keep track of them at this point, especially when those title changes are paired with a cover change. Are you supposed to keep track? I suspect it’s not an issue to double order books, but it’s certainly not going to make confusion less of a problem. 
Here’s a look at some of the recent YA title changes. I’d love to know of others that you have seen or know about, so feel free to let me know in the comments. I’d also be curious what you think of this: pain in the ass or something you’re willing to deal with? Which of these changes do you think benefit readers better? And more, have you seen this happen much in adult fiction? While it’s not an arena I’m as familiar with, I can’t come up with any examples as I’m thinking about it. 
All descriptions are from WorldCat. I’m putting the original title and cover on the left, with the redesign and renamed book on the right.

Better Than Perfect is the renamed Wild Cards by Simone Elkeles. Interesting, this one is going to keep the idea of “Wild Cards” as the series name. 

Derek Fitzpatrick is kicked out of boarding school and must move with his stepmother to her childhood home in Illinois, where he meets Ashtyn Parker, who may be able to achieve her dream with Derek’s help.

Level 2 by Lenore Appelhans has been renamed The Memory of After. The same model who was on the original cover graces the redesign, too. 

Seventeen-year-old Felicia Ward is dead and spending her time in the hive reliving her happy memories–but when Julian, a dark memory from her past, breaks into the hive and demands that she come with him, she discovers that even the afterlife is more complicated and dangerous then she dreamed.

I Am The Weapon by Allen Zadoff is the renamed Boy Nobody in paperback. The cover changed a tiny bit and I actually think it made the retitling more confusing since they’re so similar. 

Teen assassin Boy Nobody is sent on a mission to assassinate the head of a domestic terrorism cell, but his mission turns up more questions about his job than answers.

Ketchup Clouds by Annabel Pitcher will be renamed Yours Truly when it comes out in paperback in October. This one’s keeping the same cover. 

Zoe, a teenager in Bath, England, writes letters to a death-row inmate in Texas, hoping to find comfort in sharing her guilty secret over the death of a friend with someone who can never tell her family.

Christopher Pike’s Witch World was renamed and repackaged as Red Queen. But the “Witch World” phrase sticks around as the title of the series. 

On a high school graduation road trip to Las Vegas, Jessie, still in love with ex-boyfriend Jimmy, discovers that she possesses extraordinary powers and the ability to exist in both the real world and an alternate one.

Here are some backlist books that have gotten ye old title change: 

Nova Ren Suma’s Dani Noir was originally published as a middle grade title and was updated and repackaged/titled as a YA novel, Fade Out.

Imaginative thirteen-year-old Dani feels trapped in her small mountain town with only film noir at the local art theater and her depressed mother for company, but while trying to solve a real mystery she learns much about herself and life.

The Babysitter Murders by Janet Ruth Young was retitled and repackaged as Things I Shouldn’t Think.

Imaginative Massachusetts seventeen-year-old Dani Solomon confesses she has been troubled by thoughts of harming Alex, the little boy she loves to babysit, triggering gossip and a media frenzy that makes “Dani Death” the target of an extremist vigilante group.

Maureen Johnson’s The Bermudez Triangle was rereleased as On The Count of Three. 

The friendship of three high school girls and their relationships with their friends and families are tested when two of them fall in love with each other.