Day One: from #YAmatterschallenge to #blogjune

So, it's June again! But, unlike the last few years, I'm already in the swing of "doing a bit of something online every day"... yes, I've been participating in the YA Matters Challenge.

For the uninitiated, the YA Matters Challenge is a bookstagramming challenge that was set by SLV's Centre for Youth Literature. Each day in May, participants post an image on Instagram based on a set daily theme, and use the hashtag #yamatterschallenge (and #yamatters and sometimes #loveozya).

Our #YAmatters conference is only a month away, so to celebrate we’ve decided to run a little #bookstagramchallenge for #May2017! We hope you’ll join in with our #YAmatterschallenge, starting Monday 1 May. (You could even sneak a bit of #LoveOzYA in there too, if you’re feeling crafty.) We can't wait to see what you come up with! 📚📚📚#bookstagram #bookish

A post shared by Centre for Youth Literature (@centreyouthlit) on Apr 26, 2017 at 4:00pm PDT

I took on the challenge, and posted every day, but also followed the #yamatterschallenge hashtag to see what other people posted. What ensued was a fantastic celebration of YA literature that I have come to love, along with recommendations for books that I have yet to read.

But as the month came to a close, I started to think... what if I decided to table up statistics for the books that people posted? Which title and authors would come out on top? Would any surprise me?

So, I foolishly scrolled back to Day One of #yamatterschallenge, and it didn't seem too daunting a task. I did cheat a bit, and have counted a few books as a series (most notably Harry Potter). But then people started posting pictures of piles of books, and I'd gone too far to quit.

Now, I've recorded all the books for the first 16 days of the challenge, and there are a total of 592 titles!! Which, really, is not that surprising, seeing as the hashtag was used for a total of 920 posts (as of Thursday evening).

Here are a few interesting stats so far...

Day One - One-word Title. 

Equal top picks were:
Cracked - Clare Strahan
Illuminae and Gemina - Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff
Lirael - Garth Nix
Spark - Rachael Craw
Stolen - Lucy Christopher
Zeroes - Scott Westerfeld, Margo Lanagan and Deborah Biancotti

Day Two - Pages to Screen

In first place was Looking for Alibrandi - Melina Marchetta
Equal second:
The Book Thief - Marcus Zusak
Tomorrow When the War Began - John Marsden
Equal third:
Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda - Becky Albertalli
Me before You - Jojo Moyes
Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling

Day Three - Favourite Fictional School

So, wayyyy out in front here was Hogwart's, from the Harry Potter series.
But in a strong second place was the Jellicoe School from On the Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta, with Richelle Mead's Vampire Academy coming in third place.

Day Four - #LoveOzYA

So, throwing out some love for Aussie YA literature:
First: Words in Deep Blue - Cath Crowley
Second: The Sidekicks - Will Kostakis
Third: Begin, End, Begin: A #LoveOzYA Anthology - Edited by Danielle Binks

Day Five - Outer Space

So, it'll be no surprise to see that Illuminae came out a clear first, with Gemina coming in third. Let's just count them together as The Illuminae Files in this case so that we can share the love...

Second: The Starbound Trilogy - Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner
Equal Third: Life in Outer Space by Melissa Keil and Defy the Stars by Claudia Gray

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So, that's all I'll share for this post. Once I've finished tabling all the results, I'll also share the dataset for other people to do cool stuff with, if they so desire. :)

But for now, I need to go crunch more numbers.. probably for a few days. :( In the meantime, if you have any predictions on which YA books and authors will be the most popular overall, then feel free to post them in the comments!