Children's: Netflix and TikTok help YA surge

David Walliams and Adam Stower’s The World’s Worst Pets (HarperCollins) padded into a 10th week atop the Children’s chart. Though Alice Oseman’s Heartstopper series has dominated the top 10 since the Netflix adaptation dropped in April, there was a new YA streaming service adaptation on the block, with Jenny Han’s The Summer I Turned Pretty (Penguin) rising into fourth in the week after its series dropped on Amazon Prime. The sequel, It’s Not Summer Without You (Penguin), entered the chart in 12th place.

Young Adult Fiction has truly emerged from the wilderness. Back in pre-pandemic, pre-BookTok 2019, the category was in freefall, with sales at their lowest for a decade. Last week saw 14 YA titles chart in the Children’s & YA Fiction top 20 (admittedly, Oseman accounted for half of that). The TikTok-boosted Adam Silvera’s They Both Die at the End (S&S) and Kathleen Glasgow’s Girl in Pieces (Oneworld) charted, as did Karen M McManus’ Netflix-adapted One of Us is Lying (Penguin). Oseman also notched up a place in the Pre-school chart, with The Official Heartstopper Colouring Book (Hodder Children’s) scoring second place to Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler’s Badger’s Band (Macmillan Children’s).