A Monster Calls
No. of pages 240
Published: 2016
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This book is the winner of numerous awards
This book has been graded for interest at 12 years.
There are 240 pages in this book.
It is aimed at Young Adult readers. The term Young Adult (YA) is used for books which have the following characteristics: (1) aimed at ages 12-18 years, US grades 7-12, UK school years 8-15, (2) around 50-75k words long, (3) main character is aged 12-18 years, (4) topics include self-reflection, internal conflict vs external, analyzing life and its meaning, (5) point of view is often in the first person, and (6) swearing, violence, romance and sexuality are allowed.
This book was published in 2016 by Walker Books Ltd .
Jim Kay worked in the archives of Tate Britain and the Royal Botanic Gardens before becoming a full-time illustrator. He won the Kate Greenaway Medal in 2012 for his illustrations for Patrick Ness's A Monster Calls. More recently, Jim contributed an installation to the V&A Museum's Memory Palace exhibition, and was chosen by J. K. Rowling to illustrate the full-colour editions of the Harry Potter series. He lives in Kettering, Northamptonshire. Visit Jim's website at www. jimkay. co. uk Patrick Ness is the author of the critically-acclaimed and best-selling Chaos Walking trilogy. He has won numerous awards including the the Costa and Galaxy Children's Book Awards and the Carnegie Medal. He lives in London. Siobhan Dowd lived in Oxford with her husband, Geoff, before tragically dying from cancer in August 2007, aged 47. She was both an extraordinary writer and an extraordinary person.
This book has been nominated for the following awards:
Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis
This book was recognised by the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis.
UKLA Book Award
This book was recognised by the UKLA Book Award.
Galaxy British Book Award - National Book Tokens Children's Book Of the Year
This book was recognised in the National Book Tokens Children's Book of the Year category by the Galaxy British Book Award.
Carnegie Medal
This book was recognised by the Carnegie Award. The CILIP Carnegie Medal is awarded by children’s librarians for an outstanding book written in English for children and young people.
Oxfordshire Book Award
This book was recognised by the Oxfordshire Book Award.
Kate Greenaway Award
The Kate Greenaway Medal is a prestigious annual award presented in the United Kingdom to honour outstanding illustration in children's literature. Established in 1955, the award is named after the famous Victorian illustrator and author Kate Greenaway, who is celebrated for her charming and distinctive illustrations in children's books. The Kate Greenaway Medal aims to recognize and celebrate exceptional illustrations in children's books, highlighting the critical role that visual storytelling plays in engaging young readers. The award is open to any book that is illustrated for children and published in the UK during the eligibility period. This includes various genres, such as picture books, graphic novels, and illustrated stories. A panel of judges reviews submissions to select the shortlist of nominated titles. The judging criteria focus on artistic merit, originality, and the ability to enhance the story being told. The shortlisted titles are announced each year, and the winner is selected from this list
This award-winning, uncompromising novel is a valuable read for older children struggling to understand life's unavoidable trials. * Time Out *
Powerfully felt, this is stylistically Ness's book, but communicates Dowd-like wisdom. Both realistic and magical, it is a fable about the complexity of our emotions, giving us permission to feel anger and illuminating the nature of loss. -- Nicolette Jones * The Sunday Times *
A Monster Calls takes Dowd's preliminary idea, and draws out of that bud a tale that has nothing of the hybrid about it. Received wisdom dictates that books published for children need endings that are, if not exactly happy, then at least hopeful. A happy ending would have been a betrayal of the kind of bracingly honest book this is, but hope can be hard to come by in such a story. Here the desperate honesty and refusal to compromise do allow for a sort of brutal clarity to emerge, and from that finally a glimpse of something like hope. Brave and beautiful, full of compassion, A Monster Calls fuses the painful and insightful, the simple and profound. The result trembles with life. -- Daniel Hahn * Independent *
Award-winning writer Siobhan Dowd died of cancer before she could write this book, but the choice of Patrick Ness (Chaos Walking Trilogy) to take her idea and create this heartbreaking story was inspired. It is an intensely raw but emotionally rewarding rite-of-passage for young teenager Conor, whose divorced mum is dying of cancer. Using folklore stories to illustrate that good and bad are all part of the whole, the tree monster drags the reluctant Conor to confront his own demons and, in doing so, to face the future. The conclusion is brave, honest and a huge release. [...] this haunting and demanding book shines with compassion, insight and flashes of humour and is a collaboration that highlights the exceptional talents of Ness, Dowd and Kay. A worthy tribute. -- Sally Morris * Daily Mail *
Electrifying and hugely readable, it feels like a genuine act of authorial kindness when the gut-wrenching ending conveys a glimmer of redemption. * Daily Telegraph *
