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Our poetry best seller lists are based on data received from Nielsen BookScan, which tracks sales from more than 4,500 retail booksellers. Retailers included in the list include both large, high-volume retailers such as Borders and Amazon.com, and more than 400 smaller, independent bookstores. We generate the lists each week by tallying the number of books sold for recently published volumes of contemporary poetry, poetry anthologies, and children's poetry. The contemporary poetry best seller list is meant to reflect the current market for new poetry, and so excludes translations and new editions of classical works. Our small press list is based on Small Press Distribution's poetry sales to bookstores and individual customers, which are reported to us on a monthly basis.

Week of December 07, 2008

Contemporary
1	Ballistics by Billy Collins (Random House)
2	Red Bird by Mary Oliver (Beacon Press)
3	The Truro Bear and Other Adventures by Mary Oliver (Beacon Press)
4	Thirst (paperback) by Mary Oliver (Beacon Press)
5	The Pleasures of the Damned: Poems, 1951-1993 (paperback) by Charles Bukowski (Ecco)

Anthology
1	Christmas Poems Edited by Albert M. Hayes and James Laughlin (New Directions)
2	The Best American Poetry 2008 edited by Charles Wright (Scribner)
3	Good Poems for Hard Times edited by Garrison Keillor (Penguin)
4	Verses and Versions: Three Centuries of Russian Poetry Selected and Translated by Vladimir Nabokov (Harcourt)
5	The Best Poems of the English Language (paperback) edited by Harold Bloom (Harper Perennial)

Children's
1	Where the Sidewalk Ends (30th Anniversary Edition) by Shel Silverstein (HarperCollins)
2	Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes by Mem Fox (Harcourt Children's Books)
3	If You See a Fairy Ring: A Rich Treasury of Classic Fairy Poems by Susan Lockheart (illustrator) (Barron's Educational Series)
4	Nursery Rhymes by Roger Priddy (Priddy Books)
5	Dirt on My Shirt by Jeff Foxworthy, Steve Bjorkman (illustrator) (HarperCollins)

Small Press
1	from Unincorporated Territory by Craig Santos Perez (Tinfish Press)
2	Action Kylie by Kevin Killian (ingirumimusnocteetcomsumimurigni)
3	There Are Birds John Taggart (Flood Editions)
4	Permanent Address Lorna Knowles Blake (Ashland Poetry Press)
5	The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You by Frank Stanford (Lost Roads)

Behind the List

After a flurry of publicity Katy Lederer's poetic journey through the world of high finance in The Heaven Sent Leaf, makes it onto the contemporary bestsellers list at number 16. Lederer, a former employee of the hedge fund D.E. Shaw, was featured in the New Yorker and on NPR, among other places, all in the midst of a thirty city reading tour promoting this her second book of verse. Another newcomer to the list is Shadow Mountain, the first book by Claire Kageyama-Ramakrishnan, published by Four Way Books, which arrives at number 9.

Ten Poems to Change Your Life Again and Again edited by Roger Housden shows up at number 9 on the anthology list, which makes us wonder: Does "again and again" mean that these poems will change your life once, and then just change it right back again? Or will it change it again and again and again? It could be risky. Luckily, readers have Harold Bloom's Best Poems of the English Language at number 5, a monument to mental stability.

Senate hopeful Caroline Kennedy's book, A Family of Poems: My Favorite Poetry for Children, moves up two spots to number 8 on the Children's bestseller list, and Runny Babbit: A Billy Sook by Shel Silverstein reclaims the number 10 spot after a few months sabbatical from the top ten.

BOOK PICKS

02.07.08

Butterfly Eyes and Other Secrets of the Meadow
by Joyce Sidman, Beth Krommes (illustrator)
Houghton Mifflin
$16.00
From the scratchboard illustrations to the poems presented as riddles, an air of mystery envelops this picture book about meadow life. What comes “[i]n the dark . . . in the leaf-crisp air just before sunlight”? Who hides in “bubbles of pearl, all in a clustery, bubbly swirl”? Which meadow visitors are “the tall ones with crowns of velvet”? Six- to ten-year-old naturalists—and grasshopper chasers of all ages—will enjoy guessing the answers to author Joyce Sidman’s enticing questions. (Dew, spittlebugs, and deer, if you must know.) Beth Krommes’ colorful, detailed pictures reveal clues, and Sidman also intersperses helpful bits of factual prose between the poems. Butterfly Eyes was named Best Poetry Book of 2006 by the Children’s and Young Adult Bloggers Literary Awards, and Sidman’s other works, including Song of the Water Boatman and Other Pond Poems and Meow Ruff: A Story in Concrete Poetry, have also landed on a number of “best of” lists. (Song of the Water Boatman won a Caldecott honor for its art, by Beckie Prange.) It’s no secret that the smart match of delightful wordplay, science, and art make Butterfly Eyes a must-have for nature-loving children.