LSC wraps up it's year today, and we decided to look back at the year that was and present the first annual LSC Awards for Performance for each category of material type. All the material listed here is available for your convenience in Slist 43891. The following items were compiled using our internal sales data based on number of units purchased collectively by our client libraries between July 2019 and June 2020.

Starting off the list with Adult Fiction, and perhaps no surprise, is Margaret Atwood's The Testaments. This unexpected sequel to 1985's Handmaid's Tale followed on from the success of the award winning television series adaptation of the original novel. With more than thirty years of real world Western culture seeming to lean increasingly dystopian, Atwood was motivated to return to her own wasteland with a message of hope. The book, before release, was the joint (and controversial) winner of the 2019 Man Booker Prize, alongside Bernardine Evaristo's novel Girl, Woman, Other. And it was far and away the best selling adult fiction book released this year.

The oldest title on our list is 2016's Sweetest Kulu. Written by Inuit throat singer Celina Kalluk making her debut as an author, the book is a bedtime poem in which the animals of the arctic come and grant a new born baby with gifts and love. A celebration of Inuit culture, exploring the interconnected web of nature that people are a part of, and gorgeously illustrated by Alexandria Neonakis, it is no wonder that this topped our Picture Book sales this year. 

The best selling Juvenile Graphic Novel this year was Dog Man vol 7: For Whom the Ball Rolls. Dav Pilkey, long time favourite author of the Captain Underpants series, is on another roll with this hilarious series following the part-dog, part-man police officer. This was the first of two new Dog Man releases in 2019, with two more coming in 2020; vol 9 will be released this September, with vol 10 following next spring. 

For Adult Non Fiction, we have Malcolm Gladwell's Talking To Strangers: What We Should Know About The People We Don't Know. Gladwell's most recent work, whose title is not necessarily accurate, studies miscommunication. Gladwell posits humanity's inherently trusting nature, and how that is both a powerful motivator for good, but also something that can be taken advantage of. And, like all Gladwell books, this one elicited its own share of controversy upon release. Interestingly, the audiobook adaptation follows the format of Gladwell's podcast, blurring the lines between literature and radio. 

2019/2020's top DVD/Blu ray spot went to the uncontested king of the box office, Marvel's Avengers: Endgame. The culmination of ten years and 23 separate movies, Endgame brought together every hero Marvel had lifted from it's pages and put onto screen, and featured the last on screen appearance of Marvel legend Stan Lee. The recipient of $2.798 billion at the world wide box office, it topped our charts following it's release last fall. 

In Juvenile Fiction, Jeff Kinney's Wrecking Ball came in like... er, a wrecking ball and smashed the competition. This is the 14th volume of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid franchise, going strong online since 2004 and in print since 2007! Not to mention the four feature films adapted from the material. The next volume of the book series is due in October.

The highest selling Young Adult Fiction book this past year was Tomi Adeyemi's Children of Virtue and Vengeance. The second in the Legacy of Orisha series, this Youth Fantasy series draws from West African tradition. The series, written specifically to draw a sharp contrast between the way race has been traditionally treated in Youth and Fantasy literature, and in the second volume focuses on how people with power seem drawn to abuse it. The third volume has no expected release date, but the series has been optioned by Disney and Lucas Films to be turned into a film at some point in the future.

Highest selling Video Game of the past year goes to the PS4 edition of Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. Set between Episode III and the original Star Wars film, the game lets the player control Cal Kestis: fugitive Jedi, as he is hunted by Darth Vader and the Empire across the galaxy. Like everything in the Star Wars universe, the interconnectivity between this game, the films, and the various TV shows is absolute, providing lots of fun threads for fans to pick up. And with the recent announcement that this fall's PS5 will have backward compatibility with the PS4, those copies will last just that much longer in circulation. 

The final category is Adult Graphic Novel, and the top title this year is an incredible work from Star Trek actor and activist George Takei, They Called Us Enemy. This autobiographical graphic memoir relates George's experience as a young child in the Japanese internment camps ordered by FDR during the Second World War. The story that Takei tells of his family's struggles during internment and afterward was not published as a response to the US government's internment of peoples along the southern border, but was a timely addition to the conversation. Additionally, the racism Takei experienced during and after the war will doubtless feel alien to Asian Americans and Canadians in the wake of COVID-inspired racism. 

Our final category is actually a nesting doll of success, in that it is our top Multilingual materials, in our top seven languages.

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