Book Bearings
A Monster Calls
- 224 pages · about 4 hours
- First published 2011
- 15 editions
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1 About this book
A Monster Calls is a low fantasy novel written for young adults by Patrick Ness, adapted from an original idea by Siobhan Dowd, illustrated by Jim Kay and published by Walker Books in 2011. Set in present-day England, it features a boy who struggles to cope with the consequences of his mother's illness. He is repeatedly visited in the middle of the night by a monster who tells stories. Dowd was terminally ill with cancer when she came up with the idea for the story, and died before she could write it.
Ness and Kay respectively won the Carnegie Medal and the Kate Greenaway Medal in 2012, the "year's best" children's literary awards from the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP). A Monster Calls is the only book to have won both awards.
The novel was later adapted into a 2016 film and 2018 stage production of the same name.
Summary adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
- Loss (Psychology)
- Personal growth
- Grief
- Mothers and sons
- Schools
- Monsters
- Cancer
- Parents
2 About Patrick Ness
Bio adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
3 More by Patrick Ness
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