Weekly Update from David Chuka

First of all, I’d like to thank everyone who made the launch of ‘Billy and the Monster who Ate All the Easter Eggs’ a big success. It’s currently a best-seller and is NUMBER ONE in the Manners and Easter Category on the Amazon US store. I discovered a very interesting review about this book on a blog. Here it is below

 This was another wonderful book by David Chuka.  In this book  Billy and his best friend the monster  talk about all of the holidays they like.    Their favorite holiday is Easter.  Their dad comes in to tell them they are visiting their Grandma Chocolicious.  His grandma loves everything chocolate.  She makes chocolate donuts and other goodies for them.  In the middle of her kitchen is a pyramid of chocolate Easter Eggs.  They are told they can’t have any until Easter Sunday.  They go to bed and dream and think about the eggs.  Shortly after midnight they sneak down to the kitchen and begin eating the eggs.  They leave a mess and go back to bed.  The next day they hear shouting and remember the mess they had made.

They learn a lesson in “moderation”.

I loved reading this with my granddaughter.  She read most of it to me.  I loved being able to teach her a new word, “moderation”.  It was more fun listening to her use the word all day long.  When her brother grabbed too many animal crackers she took some back and said, “No Jacob, we need to eat them in moderation. That means not too often or too much.”  Her brother grabbed them back from her.  She shrugged and told me, “I guess he doesn’t understand the word moderation”.  I love books that my grandkids like and that teach lessons that are not too big.  They are taught in a way that a first grader gets it.

This is the fourth book by this author and will definitely not be the last.  I love his books and will recommend them to everyone I know with younger children.

There’s another review of ‘Counting to Ten and Sharing My Easter Eggs’ that you’ll also discover on this blog. You should have seen the big fat smile on my face when I stumbled on this review 🙂

You can see both reviews by clicking this link http://www.themusingsofabookaddict.com/2013/03/childrens-books-review.html

I also wanted to provide some feedback on ‘I Love Baby Animals.’ If you remember, a couple of weeks ago, I talked about (you can read about it in this post) how I was going to make changes to ‘What Do You Call a Baby Lion?’ which was not doing so well in terms of sales. Well, I’m happy to announce that after changing the title to ‘I Love Baby Animals’ and also the cover, sales have been very good. At one point we were number 2 in two very competitive categories. I believe my little test in changing the cover and title truly proves that a book is really judged by its cover. None of the content on the inside of the book was changed.

I’ve actually finished writing the fourth Billy and Monster book. However, I’m really struggling to find a catchy title. After the experiment with ‘I Love Baby Animals’ we all know the value of a good title. In this episode, Billy tells us a bit about where he lives and the characters on his street. We also get to meet a new family who have moved into his neighborhood and Billy has some interesting similarities with the girl whose moved next door. The working title I had for the book was ‘Billy and the Monster who had a Girlfriend’

As I begun to write the book, it became apparent that we were dealing with people, especially neighbors, so I changed the title to ‘Billy and the Monster who met a New Neighbor.’ But there’s just nothing exciting about that title. I have another title that came to me while brushing my teeth this morning. It’s ‘Billy and the Monster who met Sally and her Burping Monster’

Which of the titles above would make you want to read the book if you saw it in a bookshelf at your local bookstore? Or do you have an even more outrageous title? Please leave your comments below and if I choose a unique title you suggest, I’ll mention you (with your permission of course) when this book is published.