IN BRIEF Top 10 United Kingdom
Predictable successes hit the top of the charts last year, but donkeys, goats and unicorns represented the underdogs with aplomb
Text Kiera O’Brien 3 Kinny toasts lucky 13
Jeff Kinney’s 13th Wimpy Kid title, The Meltdown, scored the American his first overall UK number one in three years.
6
Unicorn search-and-find gallops into 2019
The 2017 Christmas stocking-filler hit Where’s the Unicorn? galloped into 2018, bringing several unicorn friends along with it. With 352,358 copies sold in total—more than half of those occuring last year—the Unicorn can still be found near the top of the Pre-school charts every week. Its follow- up, the exasperatedly-titled Where’s the Unicorn Now?, has sold a whisker under 60,000 copies since its release last September.
8 Rowling finds Fantastic form
Rowling’s sequel screenplay is her second entry in the UK top 10: Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald sold 171,803 copies after the film’s release in November.
12 2nd April 2019
Bestseller Lists UK Children’s Top 10
1
Monster hit beats rivals
of the charts
David Walliams’ Te Ice Monster topped the UK kids’ chart for 2018, rampaging to the number one in November and totting up the biggest first-week volume since Harry Potter and the Cursed Child in 2016. At 624,913 copies sold for the year, the title was a monstrous quarter of a million copies up on its nearest challenger—predictably, also by Walliams.
4
Walliams Gangs up to claim three of top four
Oh, it’s him again. This time it’s The Midnight Gang, which in hardback sold a total of 793,827 copies—his bestseller in the format. It was Walliams’ first “real” Christmas release, with its November 2016-publica- tion date pointedly later than his previous autumn offerings. The paperback, released in February 2018, shifted 244,358 copies across the year and scored fourth place—gifting Walliams three out of the top four titles.
7
A Rowling Stone still gathers an awful
lot of sales: the 2014 edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone sold 182,281 copies in 2018, matching its 2016 year-end ranking of seventh place
p 9 Kes Gr
master in its Field ray and Jim Field’s Oi Goat!
! Book Day 20 e WBD periods f
er nicknamed the “Beas their lo
in e v
e 2011 in opies
Gray’s Goat proves thes the ma
Oi Goat! emerged as the
World Book Day 2018 bestseller, in one of most bizarre WBD periods for some years. The inclement weather nicknamed the “Beast from the East” meant the tranche’s sales slid to their lowest total since 2011 in the week of the event itself—but they collectively recovered with aplomb, selling in excess of a million copies collectively. Oi Goat!, in a field Oi Goat!, in a field crammed with celebs, never hit the weekly number one—but nevertheless it persisted, toed, to the tune of 160,998 copies.
he inclement
ek of the e ent itself—but the iv
ed with c e of 160 er hit
ekly number one—but eles
10
Gangsta stakes out its territory
Gangsta Granny was the book that turned David Walliams from a come- dian-turned-author into a publishing phenomenon. It has spent more than 300 consecutive weeks in the Children’s & YA Fiction top 20 and has sold a total of 1.28 million copies. It is his best- seller to date, and still charts in the UK top 10 six years after publication. Though it never topped the overall UK chart, every Walliams release since its release has.
Top
2
Walliams and illustrator Tony Ross’ have four
titles in the children’s top 10 for 2018. Their second best, The World’s Worst Children 3, closed the short story collection trilogy in spectacular style, shifting 365,606 copies last year
5
Viral hit replicates digital success in print format
You couldn’t write a story as heartwarming as The Wonky Donkey’s real-life journey. The little mule went viral in the summer, after a YouTube video featuring a Scottish grandmother racked up over two million views. However, Craig Smith and Katz Cowley’s title wasn’t in print in the UK at the time, leading to The Wonky Donkey becoming the first ever picture book to chart in The Bookseller’s Weekly E-Book Ranking. Though a print edition wasn’t re-published until November, it became an instant bestseller—and its form continued into 2019. No picture book has topped the overall Children’s chart for a longer consecutive stretch.
sensation
Viral
Data source: Nielsen BookScan
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36