Bestsellers

Scoring system:10 points for first place, 9 for second, down to 1 for tenth, on the lists of the American Booksellers Association (independent, sometimes highbrow stores), The New York Times (4,000 bookstores, plus wholesalers), USA Today (3,000 large-inventory bookstores), and Amazon.com (Web purchases). Harry Potter series J.K. Rowling

30 points (ABA:1st; PW series list: 1st ; Amazon.com: 1st)

GIST Harry lives in a topsy-turvy moral universe, a place where your friend may be your enemy, the person you are talking to might be someone else, and even your pet cannot be trusted. The fourth Harry Potter book is due for release in July.

WORLDVIEW Relativism. The line between right and wrong is often blurry (see WORLD, Oct. 30, 1999).

CAUTION Witchcraft.

24 points (ABA: 2nd; PW: 2nd; Amazon.com: 5th)

GIST These will please those who think it doesn't matter what kids read as long as they are reading. Pilkey combines comic book-style illustration with almost nonexistent plots and plenty of bathroom humor aimed at 9- to 12-year-olds for whom saying "poopy pants" (the name of a character in the fourth volume) is a laugh riot.

WORLDVIEW N/A

CAUTION Bathroom humor and bad attitudes.

17 points (ABA: 3rd; PW: not listed; Amazon.com: 2nd)

GIST First published in 1993, two years after Dr. Seuss's death, this book is a perennial bestseller at graduation time. It is far inferior to Horton Hatches An Egg or some of the doctor's other classics, but its optimistic message about persevering through good and bad times makes it a marketing winner.

WORLDVIEW Humanism.

CAUTION N/A

17 points (ABA: not listed; PW fiction list: 1st; Amazon.com: 4th)

GIST Stanley is a loser from a long line of losers. It's all the fault of his "no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather" for initiating a curse that has been bringing bad luck to the family for generations. At Camp Green Lake, which isn't a camp and has no lake, Stanley reaches the end of the Yelnats' bad luck.

WORLDVIEW Cynicism.

CAUTION N/A

14 points (ABA:4th; PW: not listed; Amazon.com: 4th)

GIST The Bad Beginning is the first in a series that promises "not only is there no happy ending, there is no happy beginning and very few happy things in the middle."

WORLDVIEW Tongue-in-cheek fatalism.

CAUTION N/A

We live in a culture that glorifies rebellion, but the Bible says that children (including teens) are to submit to their parents. That's hard for some kids; it sometimes seems that they'd rather be spanked or put in time out or grounded forever. It's for parents of those children that Christian counselor Steve Sherbondy wrote Changing Your Child's Heart (Tyndale House, 1999). Sherbondy writes like a counselor who has experience with kids. It comes through in his anecdotes and illustrations and in the practicality of the advice he gives. The book shows that biblical love is both soft and hard, and that parents have to be willing to show the whole range of love to their kids. It asserts that conflict can be good because it reveals bad attitudes. It challenges parents to pursue those attitudes in order to expose them so that they can be removed. And it offers a series of practical steps parents can take to bring about attitude adjustments in even the most intractable teen. Sherbondy includes chapters on spanking and tantrums, and answers questions and objections people might have with his methods.