20 Bestselling Children’s Books

Period: May/June - 2022

AALBC Bestseller Seal

The African American Literature Book Club’s Bestsellers List has been published continuously since 1998. It celebrates the bestselling titles from our curated selection of books written by or about Black people. Learn More below.

★ New: The BLK Bestsellers: America’s Bestselling Books

Fiction:
Sales were led by preorders for Running to Fall: A Novel written by Kalisha Buckhanon and published by AALBC Publishing. (Sept 6, 2022) Essence magazine selected Running to Fall for their “18 New Books We Can’t Wait To Read This Summer” list.

Nonfiction:
The Enneagram for Black Liberation: Return to Who You Are Beneath the Armor You Carry by Chichi Agorom was the #1 Bestselling fiction book. It was followed by the 2022 Pulitzer Prize winning memoir, Chasing Me to My Grave: An Artist’s Memoir of the Jim Crow South by Winfred Rembert.

Children’s Books:
Sailing Commitment Around the World with Captain Bill Pinkney is the top book in the children’s category. Written by Captain Bill Pinkney with illustrations by Pamela C. Rice, the picture book for early readers tells the story of Captain Pinkney’s historic solo sail around the world in 1990.

Poetry:
Collections by Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie, Ai Ogawa, Langston Hughes, and Nikki Giovanni make our list this period and ensure there is poetry everyone can enjoy.

More About our Bestsellers List

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You will learn about books selling well in the Black community that may never show up on lists published by corporate entities. Spread the word about our list; don’t let one or two lists, which we don’t control, determine which books are important.

We collect our bestselling titles from all our sales channels. The majority of our sales come from this website and our in-person events. We also include sales generated through our affiliate relationships, including Bookshop.org, Libro.fm (audiobooks), and Amazon.com*.

*For a few years, we actively boycotted Amazon but have discontinued this practice to ensure we do not exclude authors who are exclusive to that platform. We still discourage exclusivity but support all Black authors.