Walliams' Slime slithers to the charts' top spot

David Walliams' Slime (HarperCollins Children's) has leapfrogged Mrs Hinch's The Little Book of Lists (Michael Joseph) at the top of the UK Official Top 50 through Nielsen BookScan's TCM, for the comedian-turned-author's 57th week atop the chart. With Nielsen still unable to provide volume or value figures, we are unable to say how many copies the Tony Ross-illustrated Slime sold last week, but it scored Walliams' 165th Children's number one, just a handful of weeks after The Beast of Buckingham Palace notched up a 14-week run in the kids' top spot.

With Hilary Mantel's The Mirror and the Light (Fourth Estate) only exiting from the overall top spot last week, HarperCollins titles have held the number one for five of the past six weeks.

Though The Little Book of Lists dropped from the top spot, spring cleaning is (unsurprisingly) very much on the nation's mind—Mrs Hinch's The Activity Journal charted in the top 10. Hinch Yourself Happy also swept up the chart, scoring 18th place.

Lee Child's Blue Moon (Bantam) rose to third place, swiping the Mass Market Fiction top spot for the author's 34th week. Danielle Steel's The Dark Side (Pan) and Jenny Colgan's The Bookshop on the Shore (Sphere) were the highest new entries, both charting in the Top 50's top 10.

Though educational workbooks, paperback fiction and activity titles continued to dominate the lockdown charts, Easter's effect was also in evidence, with Martha Mumford and Laura Hughes' We're Going on an Egg Hunt (Bloomsbury) rising to sixth place, Peppa and the Easter Bunny (Ladybird) hunting down 14th and Chuck Whelon's Where's the Bunny? (Buster) rolling into 29th.