Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes soars into charts top spot

Suzanne Collins' prequel to The Hunger Games series, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (Scholastic), has hit the right chord with book-buyers, soaring straight into the UK Official Top 50 number one spot.

Collins' original trilogy sold 3.9 million copies in the UK on its release in 2011, with The Hunger Games spending three weeks in the overall top spot in spring 2012, on the release of the film adaptation.

Knocking David Walliams' Slime (HarperCollins) from the Children's top spot after a seven-week run, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes becomes the first Young Adult Fiction title to take the kids' pole since Sarah J Maas' Kingdom of Ash (Bloomsbury) in autumn 2018 and the first to take the overall number one since Zoe "Zoella" Sugg's Girl Online: On Tour (Penguin) in October 2015. (We should note here that Philip Pullman's Book of Dust titles are classified as Children's Fiction through Nielsen BookScan.)

Charlie Mackesy's The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse (Ebury) and Sally Rooney's Normal People (Faber) leapfrogged the previous week's number one, Joe Wicks' Wean in 15 (Bluebird), which slipped to fourth place. Mackesy's soothing illustrated title returned to the Hardback Non-Fiction number one, its 14th since its release in October 2019, while Rooney's Millennial romance populated the Mass Market Fiction number one slot for a third straight week.

Adele Parks' Just My Luck (HQ) jumped into the Original Fiction number one spot for the author's first ever pole in the category chart, displacing Stephen King's If It Bleeds (Hodder).

Rutger Bregman's Humankind (Bloomsbury) debuted in fifth place in the Hardback Non-Fiction top 20, and was the highest new entry in the Top 50, in 16th place.

Vex King's Good Vibes, Good Life (Hay House) has long been the Small Publishers number one but last week claimed its first Paperback Non-Fiction top spot, leapfrogging Adam Kay's This is Going to Hurt (Picador).

Once again this week Nielsen BookScan is unable to provide volume or value figures, with the reduction in the number of retailers remaining open during the coronavirus lockdown impacting its ability to report market data.