Home Sweet Homeschool
As day care centers and schools in the areas of the country hardest hit by coronavirus shut down, children’s books with educational angles surged in popularity. My First Learn-to-Write Workbook is the #1 book in the country and #1 in the Northeast and on the West Coast, with overall print unit sales up 264% compared to the week before. Elsewhere, D&D: Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount captured the East North Central region’s attention; YouTuber James Rallison’s The Odd 1s Out: The First Sequel climbed to the top of the Mountain region, and Where the Crawdads Sing serenaded the rest.
Crayon and On
Kerby Rosanes, whose Animorphia has sold 276K print copies, returns with Worlds Within Worlds, debuting this week at #6 in trade paper. Another coloring book stalwart, Millie Marotta, saw sales of Brilliant Beasts more than double compared with the previous week, landing the title on our trade paper list for the first time, at #16.
TV Watch
Reese Witherspoon’s Hulu adaption of Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere dropped March 18, and tie-ins pubbed the day before. The mass market tie-in debuts at #8 on that list, and while the trade paper tie-in fell short of charting, the 2019 trade paperback is up 95%, leaping nine spots to #3 in the country.
NEW & NOTABLE
DEATHS OF DESPAIR AND THE FUTURE OF CAPITALISM
Anne Case and Angus Deaton
#19 Hardcover Nonfiction
Two Princeton economists—Deaton is also a Nobel Prize winner—explain how capitalism as practiced in the U.S. devastates the working class. “We believe in capitalism,” they write in the preface. But “if governments are unwilling to exercise compulsion over health insurance and to take the power to control costs, tragedies are inevitable.”
