Yesterday Publishers Weekly released their lists of the bestselling children books of 2015. Here’s what I noticed…

1. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Old School topped the fiction list by a mile.

Second place, John Green’s Paper Towns, trailed by a mere … 500,000 copies. Yes, #1 beat #2 by a number that almost matched the total sales of #3 – Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul. Greg Heffley had another good year.

2. Down with tradition.

There was only one “traditional” (not a tie-in, not heavily illustrated) middle grade novel in the fiction top 10 – Wonder.

3. I’m an old curmudgeon who doesn’t know his YouTube stars.

I was surprised that a book I had never heard of – The Amazing Book is Not On Fire – was the ninth bestselling book on the nonfiction list. Come to find out it’s about a well-known YouTube duo. I need to get with the times.

4. The picture book list loves the 90s, and the 80s, and the 70s and the…

There’s only one truly recent book on the 2015 picture book bestseller list – and it isn’t even a 2015 book – it’s The Day the Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt and Oliver Jeffers, published in 2013. I suppose you could count What Pet Should I Get? as recent, but that one’s a special case: Seuss, “lost manuscript”, etc.

What did you notice?