I have been giving a lot of thought to the title of my "untitled middle-grade" adventure. I did not worry about it before; I always assumed the title would jump out at me as I wrote. Adventures for children, even older children, need to have a title that clearly tells them "Read me, I am exactly the kind of book you want."

The original story was going to center on a male protagonist named Bill, but when it became an adventure for younger readers I felt I could write about a boy-girl team more effectively. A coworker suggested the name "Piper" for the girl, and I had already kind of settled on "Tom" for the boy.

The Adventures of Tom and Piper: Ghost Ship

Tom and Piper Adventures: Book One, The Ghost Ship

Tom and Piper in the Adventure of the Ghost Ship

Ghost Ship: A Tom and Piper Adventure

Ghost Ship: A Tom and Piper Novel

Ghost Ship: A Tom and Piper Book

The Ghost Ship: A New Tom and Piper Adventure

Keywords are an important aspect of naming a series (less so a standalone novel), and "adventure" is more descriptive than something like "novel" or "book", so I wrote off the titles that did not include "adventure".

I put Tom's name first in the title for a few reasons, but mainly because I am male and feel like it will be easier for me to write from that viewpoint (I am an aspiring author with no experience writing from a female POV as I write this). I have not done the research yet, but I feel like young boys are going to be a bigger market for these adventures and I fear that "the adventures of Piper and Tom" might not sound as interesting to them. I never liked Nancy Drew novels when I was a child, but I loved Hardy Boyse, for example. 

A Tom and Piper Adventure

The Tom and Piper Adventures

The Adventures of Tom and Piper

The question is, will readers a year from now like any of these?