Sometimes a book comes to represent a certain genre or style so completely that every book published afterward that is even remotely similar will be compared to it. It owns it’s corner.

Here are the books I can think of that own their corners. Any to add? Let’s hear it in the comments.

The Interactive Corner:

Press Here by Hervé Tullet

I feel sorry for other books that have interactive elements now. Press Here came and broke that ground, and now every other interactive book has to be resigned to the fact that it will be treated with a shade of skepticism (“Wait – this new book appears to be doing something kinda like Press Here, and yet . . . it’s not Press Here“).

The “A Main Character is Eaten at the End’ Corner:

I Want My Hat Back by Jon Klassen

Characters were eaten in books before I Want My Hat Back, but if it’s happened in a book since, you can bet it gets compared to Klassen’s modern classic.

The Graphic Novel Memoir Corner:

Smile by Raina Telgemeier

How can you tell Raina Telgemeier’s books own this corner? Because any time a new book in the same vein arrives, she’s quoted on the cover.

The Diary Corner:

Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney

If it’s illustrated and in diary format, Jeff Kinney’s series is the first thing that folks think of.