A Monster Calls

Name: A Monster Calls
Rating: 5 (1 reviews)

by Patrick Ness, illustrated by Jim Kay
From an idea by Siobhan Dowd

Interest age: 11 to 14
Reading age: 10+

Published by Walker Books, 2011

Classics
Coming-of-age

About this book

Connor's mum has cancer and life is irrevocably, disturbingly changing. First there is the nightmare, filled with screaming and falling; then there is school, where people avoid him (not knowing what to say), or persecute him.

There is his enforced, combative intimacy with his distant, spiky gran. And then there is the Monster, immense, tree-like, mythic.

He comes at night, makes Connor listen to un-story-like stories, pushes him to the edge of what is bearable - because 'you know that your truth, the one that you hide, Connor O'Malley, is the thing you are most afraid of'.

Visceral, dark, sad, beautiful, hopeful and really, really angry, this is a beautifully structured, dense, layered novel about the monster that touches us all at some point. This extraordinary book was the first ever to win both the CILIP Carnegie and the CILIP Kate Greenaway Medals.

About the author

Patrick grew up in the US and studied English Literature at the University of Southern California. He moved to London in 1999. Since then he has published four novels. The Knife of Never Letting Go won numerous awards, including the Book Trust Teenage Prize, the Guardian Award, and the 2008 James Tiptree, Jr. Award. In January 2010 he won the 2009 Costa Book Award for the category children's book for The Ask and the Answer. He has also written a novel and a collection of short stories for adults, although he prefers not to categorise his writing in this way.

He taught creative writing at Oxford University and has written and reviewed for The Daily Telegraph, The TLS, The Sunday Telegraph and The Guardian. Patrick was BookTrust's first-ever online writer in residence.

About the illustrator

Jim Kay studied illustration in Edinburgh. After leaving university he worked for two years in the Archives of the Tate Gallery in London, and then worked as Assistant Curator of the Art Collections at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, for four years.

He now illustrates children's books and has started writing for children. He currently lives in Northamptonshire.

More books like this

One Crow Alone

by Sophie Crockett

11 to 14 years
Bog Child

by Siobhan Dowd

9 to 14 years
The Ask and the Answer

by Patrick Ness

11 to 14 years
The Knife of Never Letting Go

by Patrick Ness

11 to 14 years

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