4 Things I Noticed About the Bestselling Children’s Books of 2015
Yesterday Publishers Weekly released their lists of the bestselling children books of 2015. Here’s what I noticed…
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1. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Old School topped the fiction list by a mile.
Second place, John Green’s Paper Towns, trailed by a mere … 500,000 copies. Yes, #1 beat #2 by a number that almost matched the total sales of #3 – Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul. Greg Heffley had another good year.
2. Down with tradition.
There was only one “traditional” (not a tie-in, not heavily illustrated) middle grade novel in the fiction top 10 – Wonder.
3. I’m an old curmudgeon who doesn’t know his YouTube stars.
I was surprised that a book I had never heard of – The Amazing Book is Not On Fire – was the ninth bestselling book on the nonfiction list. Come to find out it’s about a well-known YouTube duo. I need to get with the times.
4. The picture book list loves the 90s, and the 80s, and the 70s and the…
There’s only one truly recent book on the 2015 picture book bestseller list – and it isn’t even a 2015 book – it’s The Day the Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt and Oliver Jeffers, published in 2013. I suppose you could count What Pet Should I Get? as recent, but that one’s a special case: Seuss, “lost manuscript”, etc.
What did you notice?
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About Travis Jonker
Travis Jonker is an elementary school librarian in Michigan. He writes reviews (and the occasional article or two) for School Library Journal and is a member of the 2014 Caldecott committee. You can email Travis at scopenotes@gmail.com, or follow him on Twitter: @100scopenotes.
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I bought one of those copies of Brown Bear, Brown Bear What do You See? this year, for my niece when turned two. And a couple Dr. Suess books for one of my nephews. I guess people really like the classics, especially as gifts.
It’s interesting that classics populate the picture book list when so many phenomenal new books came out last year. I’m also surprised by what I don’t see on that list–popular titles like Pete the Cat, popular authors like Mo Willems or Kevin Henkes. I guess it goes to show that people will buy the classics but they check out new books from the library!
Apparently I’m not up on the YouTube sensations, either. Yesterday a student asked me for a Matty B book. She said he was a kid rapper on YouTube?
I could probably have 10 copies of Crayons and the sequel in my collection and they’d never be checked in!! (We only have 2 copies each) What a good problem to have.
To be fair, if you add up the two editions of Paper Towns, John Green isn’t that far behind.
One book that I found to be greatly missing from this body of work is the mystery of the sunshine girl, a dazziling story with a great deal more to come.
My guess on the picture book list: parents/grandparents are buying the books and buy what they remember from their own childhood. They want to sit with their children/grandchildren and share those much-loved books.
My hope on the fiction: parents/grandparents realize the kids they buy for don’t want the books they remember from that age in their own childhood. They aren’t going to sit with their child/grandchild to share the book. So–what do they go on to make their purchase? Maybe it isn’t them actually making the decision. Maybe they’ve got that child/grandchild with them, and that is who chooses the books. They likely choose what is popular with their peers.
Thanks for noting these trends! One other thought: chapter books are super important to young readers, but rarely tracked. It’s hard to know how sales are doing, but my sense is that the number of titles, subjects, and genres are expanding at this level, but I’m not sure if there are any break-out hits besides the perennial favorite series like Ivy and Bean.
#4 – This isn’t surprising at all. Most of the list are full-fledged brands that have been built over time. No new book is going to compete with e.g. ‘Green Eggs & Ham’.
Well observed, thanks for sharing.
I too can’t keep up with my daughters, and students, in the ever changing youtube world…it is its own beast.