Katie Kirby’s latest Lottie Brooks is the bestselling kids’ book this summer
Dav Pilkey continues to be top dog in Children’s Comics & Graphic Novels
hindered other categories, with a 1.6% decline in the overall TCM, equal to a loss of £5.8m, more than covered by the £7.7m that has not been spent on children’s books. It does not appear to be a prob-
lem in frontlist (sales of the Top 50 titles have risen by 1.6%, delivering an extra £119,374 year on year) but that is just a drop in the ocean when looked at the wider market. The biggest categories – Picture Books, Children’s Fiction and Novelty & Activity books – are all between 8% and 10% down compared to the summer of 2024, contributing £4.4m to the decline, while sales from all kids’ textbooks categories have experienced a 20.6% drop, just over £2.1m. The biggest title across June,
In the Spotlight
July and August in 2024 was the Little People BIG DREAMS biog- raphy of Taylor Swift, which was released to coincide with the mega-star’s UK tour. Annualising has led to a cruel summer for Maria Isabel Sánchez Vegara’s biography series with a 61.8% fall, leading to the biggest sales drop of any single author as absolute sales fall £712,320. That drop is mirrored by a rise
Rachel Renee Russell Dork Diaries: Sister Showdown Simon & Schuster Children’s, £7.99, 9781398541207
The 16th book in the Dork Diaries series was released in June and has experienced sales of 27,522 copies, which at first glance gives Russell a strong summer performance, up 10.8% on the previous year. However, the 15th book in the series, Dork Diaries: I Love Paris, was released a month before, meaning sales from its first few weeks do not feature in the comparable period. Russell’s backlist shows a small decline of 0.8% units, but this still gives her a better summer than most.
27,522 TCM copies sold
of 85.1% for Katie Kirby, delivering an extra £729,661 for the Lottie Brooks author; she takes first place on the chart of summer 2025, with the hardback edition of Lottie Brooks vs the Ultra Mean Girls sell- ing 84,048 copies and totalling
£763,583 – a growth of 65.1% compared with 2024’s The Majorly Awkward BFF Dramas of Lottie Brooks. Kirby’s backlist sales have also risen 108.6% compared with the previous summer. Kirby is certainly bucking the
trend as other authors and brands have seen the hot weather dent their sales. Julia Donaldson – still the biggest name in children’s books – has dropped 3.8%, with Fiona Watt falling slightly faster at 4.9%, while JK Rowling has shed 22.3% in sales, David Walliams is down 61.8% and even sales of titles attributed to the Australian Blue Heeler pup Bluey have dropped by just under a quarter. It is not all bad news, though,
as sales for two categories have grown year on year. Perhaps unsurprisingly, one of those is Children’s Comic Strip Fiction & Graphic Novels, which has expe- rienced a 16.9% jump, adding an extra three quarters of a million to the count with roughly half of that thanks to Dav Pilkey and his Dog Man series. What reason could it be, though,
that Young Adult General Interest and Leisure has seen a 183% boost, leading to an extra £894,254 in the coffers? It all makes sense when you understand that this is where sales of the Coco Wyo colouring books Cozy Corner and Cozy Cuties have been recorded. There have been 140,585 units sold across the two books for a combined total of £720,508, a little over half of the sub-category’s total sales.
REPORTING Alex Call
21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s… JK Rowling Bloomsbury Children’s, 9781408855652
The Extremely Embarrassing Life… Katie Kirby Puffin, 9780241460887
21,736 21,478
The Tooth Fairy and… Julia Donaldson; L Monks Macmillan Children’s, 9781447284444
21,037
Sticker Dolly Dressing: Fairy… Fiona Watt; A Miller Usborne, 9781805316886
The Dinosaur That Pooped… Poynter & Fletcher Puffin, 9780241649282
Big Jim Begins Dav Pilkey Scholastic, 9781338896459
For Whom the Ball Rolls Dav Pilkey Scholastic, 9780702303678
Mothering Heights Dav Pilkey Scholastic, 9780702313493
Dog Man Dav Pilkey Scholastic, 9781407140391
20,961 20,892 20,785 20,134 19,723 19,582
Secret Code Games for Clever… Gareth Moore Buster, 9781780558738
Dear Zoo Rod Campbell Macmillan Children’s, 9781529074932
The Tiger Who Came to Tea Judith Kerr HarperCollins Children’s, 9780007215997
Fearless Lauren Roberts Simon & Schuster, 9781398531277
19,514 19,434 19,284 19,104
The Mega-Complicated Crushes… Katie Kirby Puffin, 9780241562031
Reckless Lauren Roberts Simon & Schuster, 9781398530126
18,954 18,496
Lottie Brooks’s Totally Disastrous… Katie Kirby Puffin, 9780241562055
18,465
Sticker Dolly Dressing: School… F Watt; J Secheret Usborne, 9781474990844
The Camel Who Had the Hump R Bright; J Field Orchard Books, 9781408366417
No More Nappies Campbell, 9781509836314
Grime and Punishment Dav Pilkey Scholastic, 9780702310676
18,201 18,045 17,849 17,720
A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder Holly Jackson Electric Monkey, 9781405293181
Hot Mess Jeff Kinney Puffin, 9780241583166
Happy Street Sam Jayne Townhouse, 9781917156554
17,649 17,639 17,577
Follow the Swallow Julia Donaldson; T Docherty Farshore, 9780008670320
Donut Squad: Take Over the World! N Cameron DFB Phoenix, 9781788453400
Where’s Spidey? Studio Press, 9781800783010
Wipe Clean: First Words Bookoli, 9781787726581
The Summer I Turned Pretty Jenny Han Penguin, 9780241599198
16,721 16,675 16,531 16,462 16,408
The Catastrophic Friendship Fails of… Katie Kirby Puffin, 9780241460900
How to Train Your Dragon Cressida Cowell Hodder Children’s, 9781444980011
16,342 16,342 39
Charts Market Spotlight
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