Most Popular Children's and Young Adult Book Authors of 2010

In January 2011, USA Today released its list of Top 100 Bestselling Books for 2010. Fiction dominated the Top 100 Bestsellers, including popular authors like Nicholas Sparks, Stephen King, and James Patterson. And Stieg Larsson received top honors as the first, second, and third books in his Millennium Trilogy-The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest-received the top three bestselling spots respectively.

But even more notable, many of the Top 100 Bestsellers were books written for children or young adults. J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows hung on at number 83. All three books in Suzanne Collins's Hunger Games Trilogy, a post-apocalyptic series aimed at young adults, were in the top third. Even classics like To Kill a Mockingbird and The Catcher in the Rye, which both feature child or young adult protagonists, made the Top 100.

[Related: 2010 Surprising Trends in Children's Books]

In fact, an analysis of the data, which includes ebook sales, shows that three of the five most popular authors on the list write books aimed at children or young adults:

Rick Riordan
The author of the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series may have received a boost in sales from the release of the film adaptation, Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightening Thief early in 2010. All five books in the series made the Top 100 list. But it looks like fans are ready for new material. The first books in his two new series, The Kane Chronicles and Heroes of Olympus, also made it into the top 30.

Stephenie Meyer
With the release of The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner in the summer of 2010, Meyer kept hold of her popularity. First released as a free ebook , Second Life didn't suffer from reduced sales as a result of its unconventional release. It reached number 11 on the Top 100 Bestsellers list, although the last book in the Twilight series, Breaking Dawn, was still Meyer's top seller at number 10.

Jeff Kinney
The fifth book in Kinney's Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Ugly Truth, was his best seller, reaching number 6, but every book in the series made the list, including The Wimpy Kid Movie Diary, a companion to the film adaptation, which was released in March 2010.

In fact, with the summer 2010 release of the movie Eclipse, based on the third book in Meyer's Twilight series, one can assume that all three of these bestselling children's and young adult book authors of 2010 enjoyed the boost in book sales that usually accompanies a major film release. No doubt The Hunger Games movie will give Suzanne Collins's books a resurgence in sales when it is released in 2013.

[Related: 10 Bestselling Books of 2010 You've Already Forgotten]

Sources:
USA TODAY's Best-Selling Books: The top 100 for 2010 [USAToday.com]
2010 saw a frenzy for fiction, led by Stieg Larsson's 'Girl' trilogy [USAToday.com]