Total takeover: World Book Day titles achieve a full house in the charts
This year’s World Book Day titles (WBD) have dominated the charts this week, taking up the first 12 slots in the Official UK Top 50, according to NielsenIQ BookScan’s Total Consumer Market (TCM).
They are led by Jamie Smart’s Bunny vs Monkey: Total Chaos! (DFB Phoenix), which grabs the number one for the fourth consecutive week having interested 52,773 schoolchildren clutching their £1 vouchers. That is a 44.6% increase compared with the previous seven days – but down when compared against the biggest-selling title of WBD week in 2025, when Bluey’s Little Book topped the rankings with 54,529 copies.
The reduction in the top title might be indicative that the broader list is more appealing; in total; the dozen 2026 titles amassed 459,155 copies, 4.8% more than the number given away by booksellers in the same week in 2025.
Nathanael Lessore’s football/poetry mash-up Against All Odds (Hot Key) has experienced the biggest increase this week of any of this year’s titles, more than doubling to become the choice of 20,908 young readers. But that puts it in 12th place, managing to secure the uninterrupted WBD run by just 180 copies.
In lucky 13th place this week – and the bestselling adult title – is a familiar face to all keen chart-watchers. Freida McFadden’s Want to Know a Secret? was originally published in 2021, but this is the first time a physical edition has been available in the UK, so coupled with the legion of new fans following the film adaptation of The Housemaid it is no surprise to see it shifting 20,728 copies in its first week.
It is not just the £1 books that have been popular – the WBD authors have seen increases across their non-WBD titles as well. Jamie Smart’s Bunny vs Monkey: Intergalactic Monkey Business has seen its sales jump 71.4% to 4,473; The Last Bear by Hannah Gold and featuring illustrations by Levi Pinfold (HarperCollins) has risen by 40.8%; and Roald Dahl’s Matilda with illustrations from Quentin Blake (Puffin) has climbed to 4,424 copies this week – a boost of 83.7%.
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Elsewhere in the children’s market there has been an increase in the number of Easter-themed titles making their mark on the charts, led by Rod Campbell’s Fluffy Chick (Macmillan Children’s) which sees its sales rise by 103.4% to 5,544 copies.
The Original Fiction number one is a re-entry for Imani Erriu’s Fallen Stars (Viking), which was originally published in November but sees its sales increase this week to 5,143 copies thanks to a special edition from FairyLoot. It keeps LJ Ross’ Berwick (Century) in second for another week after it was stopped from reaching the top spot by another FairyLoot edition in the previous seven-day period. Sales for that book, Weavingshaw by Heba Al-Wasity (Bantam), have dropped 95.6% this week to just 577 copies.
In its third week on sale, Gisèle Pelicot’s A Hymn to Life (Bodley Head), translated by Natasha Lehrer and Ruth Driver, has risen to first place in the Hardback Non-Fiction Top 20, despite its sales falling 36.5% to 3,335 copies.
The previous number one – Dominque Ludwig’s No-Nonsense Nutrition (Bluebird) – has had sales drop 88.7% to 1,891 copies, at the same time as its average selling price rose by nearly £7 to £21.26.
Pelicot’s memoir is the bestselling Non-Fiction title of the week managing to beat the first week of the paperback edition of Robert Macfarlane’s Is a River Alive? (Penguin) which debuts at the summit of Paperback Non-Fiction with 3,195 copies sold.
Increased footfall in World Book Day week has seen 3.9 million books sold – a rise on the previous week of 13.1% – with value rising 6.4x% to £32.2m. The extra WBD sales have also helped drive year on year figures – volume is up 2.7%, with value jumping 5.5%.
