‘Nevermoor’ tops Dymocks Kids’ Top 51 list

Monday, 9 July 2018 Books+Publishing

Dymocks Booklovers members have cast a combined 5500 votes for their favourite children’s book of all time, with Queensland writer Jessica Townsend’s Nevermoor: The Trials of Morrigan Crow (Lothian) taking the top spot.

Townsend’s 2017 debut has sold over 17,000 copies through Dymocks stores since publication last October. It beat the ‘Harry Potter’ series (J K Rowling, Bloomsbury), which came in second, and Australian author Lynette Noni’s ‘The Medoran Chronicles’ series (Pantera), which came third.

A total of 13 Australian titles made the top 51—down from 18 Australian titles last year—including books by Morris Gleitzman, Anh Do, Andy Griffiths, John Marsden, Jacqueline Harvey, Melina Marchetta, Sally Rippin and Peter Helliar. Australian writers with two titles on the list include John Flanagan, Mem Fox and Aaron Blabey.

Dymocks reported that, for the first time, the list is dominated by books aimed at young adults (30% of the top 51) and older readers (35%). Dymocks children’s category manager Imogen Neely attributed this partly to successful film tie-ins, including Love, Simon, the film tie-in edition of Becky Albertalli’s Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda (Penguin), which came in fourth, and Wonder (R J Palacio, Random House), in eighth spot. ‘Teen readers love to see their treasured characters brought to life on the screen,’ said Neely.

Dymocks runs the Kids’ Top 51 campaign each year, asking members of its Booklovers loyalty program to vote for their favourite books of all time.

This is the 10th year Dymocks has published this list. For more information, visit the Dymocks website here.

Category: Junior Local news