13th December 2024
Data source Nielsen. Date range 2024 to date.
Children’s Festive Top 50
1 Squirrel’s Snowman 46,696
Julia Donaldson; Axel Scheffler Macmillan Children’s, 9781529034370
2
We’re Going on a Sleigh Ride 42,181 Martha Mumford; Cherie Zamazing Bloomsbury Children’s, 9781526666819
3
What the Ladybird... Christmas 40,724 Julia Donaldson; Lydia Monks Macmillan Children's, 9781529087086
4
The Night Before Christmas Bookoli, 9781802491494
5
Kipper’s Christmas Eve Mick Inkpen
Hodder Children’s, 9781444916232 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
Sally's Lament Mari Mancusi Autumn, 9781835446164
Dear Santa Rod Campbell Macmillan Children's, 9781529050714
We're Going on an Elf Hunt! Patch Moore Make Believe Ideas, 9781803376271
Bluey's Night Before Christmas Ladybird, 9780241673553
36,416 36,317 34,107 29,724
Bluey: The Most Amazing Advent Book Bundle Ladybird, 9780241714942
How the Grinch Stole Christmas! Dr Seuss HarperCollins, 9780007365548
Nightmare Before Christmas Phidal, 9782764357781
28,137 27,501 24,971
We're Going on an Elf Chase Mumford; Hughes Bloomsbury Childrens, 9781408872413
The Gruffalo... Advent Donaldson; Scheffler Macmillan Children's, 9781035004577
Christmas at Hogwarts JK Rowling; Ziyi Gao Bloomsbury Childrens, 9781526677082
24,421 23,816 21,468
The Dinosaur... Pooped a Reindeer! Fletcher et al Puffin, 9780241649077
Oh, Christmas Tree! Sue Hendra & Paul Linnet Macmillan Children's, 9781509827503
20,210 19,800
Christmas Wordsearches for Kids Sarah Khan Buster, 9781780557434
That's Not
My...Christmas Tree Watt; Wells Usborne, 9781803707778
The Christmasaurus Fletcher; Devries Puffin, 9780241466568
19,011 18,569 17,853 52 Charts
Checking them twice: festive-themed children’s book sales soar
T
he children’s book market—perhaps more than any other part of Nielsen BookScan’s Total
Consumer Market (TCM) – is particularly responsive to the changing seasons, with special editions of many big-brand authors and characters rising into the list of top sellers at various points throughout the year, includ- ing Easter, Halloween and, of course, Christmas. In the week ending 30th
November, there were 286 identifi- ably festive titles in the TCM’s Top 5,000 list – that is an eighth of the total number of children’s books, but they account for 21.1% of all children’s sales.
For full transparency, there is
no easy way of categorising these titles in the TCM data. Instead, we have noted all the books that feature festive words in their titles – from the obvious ones such as “Christmas” and “Nativity” to the more thematic such as “snow” and “jingle bells”. It is these titles upon which this analysis is based, but it is possible some of the more esoteric titles have been missed. In the latest week of data, these
Christmas titles were worth a collective £1.75m – perhaps unsur- prisingly accounting for 20% of their sales for the year to date. In fact, in the eight weeks across October and November these books have delivered £7.2m through the TCM – 81% of their 2024 total so far.
Anyone who has worked in a bookshop will be able to tell you that children are less repectful of the calendar than their adult counterparts
39,379
37,563
Charts Market Spotlight
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