A monster calls

Cover image from Walker Books

The novel, A monster calls by Patrick Ness (Walker, 2011) is the result of a collaboration between many talents, and everything about the book made it a deeply moving and memorable reading experience for me.

It tells the story of 13 year old Conor whose waking nightmare is seeing his mother go through the gruelling treatment for cancer, but whose just-past-midnight nightmares are full of darkness and holding on and falling, and a monster, who turns out to be ancient, wild and wise, and ultimately helps Conor face the truth of what is happening and come to understand how he will be able to go on.

The monster does this through the power of stories and by helping Conor tell his own story… “Stories are important”, the monster said. “They can be more important than anything. If they carry the truth.”

If it sounds like an emotional read you are right – I quietly wept my way through the last part of the book, but it is also exciting, frightening, funny and clever, with no easy endings but satisfying resolutions of hope and strength. I thought as I started reading that it would make a terrific read-aloud, but came to feel that it is a more personal and private sort of read, and would definitely take someone with a “lower water table” than I have to read it aloud successfully. A Books for Keeps review says “it would make a stone doorstep weep”.

Patrick Ness says “I think the novel is about loss, yes, but also about the fear of loss, which is universal, I think. Everyone knows what it's like to lie in bed late at night worrying about if the worst ever happened. Loss, I think, we can handle better than the worry that leads up to it, which can kill us. That's what I was really interested in exploring.”

For a well written review, see this link to the Vulpes Libres blog – “A collective of bibliophiles writing about books”

And here are some notes in a long post about aspects I found interesting which I followed up after reading the book...

The original idea for the story came from the author Siobahn Dowd who had the characters, the premise, the beginning, but what she didn’t have was time – she died of cancer before she could complete this book. This obituary gives a good account of the sort of person Siobahn was, and here is a link to the Trust which she set up in the days before she died – unfortunately the webpage is not up to date. Siobhan’s fundamental belief was: “If a child can read, they can think, and if a child can think they are free” and she had spent much of her life using the written word to campaign for human rights and freedom.

Siobahn chose Patrick Ness to write the book, and he says in his introduction, “I felt – I feel – as if I’ve been handed a baton, like a particularly fine writer has given me her story and said, “Go. Run with it. Make trouble.”… and then goes on to ‘hand the baton’ on to the reader.

Patrick Ness is an American who has been living and writing in the UK since 1999 – here is a link to his (not recently updated) biography - I liked his deadpan comment “Luckily my Hawaiian childhood prepared me for English summers !”

He is the author of the Chaos Walking trilogy – The knife of never letting go, The ask and the answer, and the third book, Monsters of men which has just won the 2011 Carnegie Medal> The previous two books were also shortlisted for the Carnegie in 2009 and 2010, the first time this has been achieved by all books in a series.

The CILIP Carnegie Medal is the UK's oldest and most prestigious prize for children's and young people's writing, and here is a link to their “living archive” celebrating Carnegie and Greenaway authors and illustrators and here is the press release for Monsters of men

In his acceptance speech for the Carnegie Medal, Patrick Ness fiercely defended school and public libraries which are under such threat in the UK from government financial cuts.

In this Guardian piece Patrick Ness, who describes himself as a "child that libraries built", praised the work of librarians.
"Librarians open up the world," he said. "Knowledge is useless if you don't even know where to begin to look. How much more can you discover when someone can point you in the right direction, when someone can maybe even give you a treasure map, to places you may not have even thought you were allowed to go? This is what librarians do."

And read here for Patrick Ness’s impassioned acceptance speech for the Carnegie Medal (an edited version of it) in which he lambasts the government's policy on libraries and sings the praises of libraries, librarians, the Carnegie especially the Shadowing scheme, and above all the readers…
"It's a celebration of all those brilliant young people who – in the face of everything – still find joy in a book. Still find the world waiting for them in a book. Still see possible futures and lives and loves and opportunities and hopes and dreams in a book. They still do this. Despite everything that gets thrown at them. And they are worth fighting for."

Back to A monster calls…

The third wonderful collaborator is the artist Jim Kay whose menacing, scratchy, otherworldly illustrations are perfect for this book. Here is a link to his website and the link to A monster calls in which he describes the process of illustrating the book and shares some early sketches and inspirations…
"The below image was the first I produced for the book (so I was nervous doing it). It was a mixture of relief printing, black pen and ink, and various printed textures, digitally pieced together. In an ideal world I would have loved to have illustrated the whole book using etching and monoprint techniques, but it would have taken a year to finish it!"

Have a look at this German book trailer for a brilliant animation of the illustrations, (though I do think the English cover is better than the German edition cover of the book).

Here is an interesting BookTrust interview with Patrick Ness and Jim Kay in which they talk about inspiration from the Green man, a figure from English folklore…
“The Green Man is interesting, because like the character 'Death', he pops up in art and literature in surprising places in all shapes and sizes. And like Death he is timeless, powerful, menacing even - but ultimately just.”

And if you are interested, the yew tree is a plant rich in history and connections – here is a wikipedia article and an alternative view from the white dragon world of druids and celts.... “Because of its longevity and its unique way of growing new trunks from within the original root bole, it has now been estimated that some English Yews are as much as 4,000 years old, their presence spanning ages of time and history. No wonder the Yew is associated with immortality, renewal, regeneration, everlasting life, rebirth, transformation and access to the Otherworld and our ancestors.”

The fourth collaborator in this book must also be acknowledged - the publisher Walker Books, a world leader in publishing for children (US imprint Candlewick Press).
The book design and production quality is superb – from its size and shape and paper quality, the dustjacket, hardcover and end papers, and throughout the book from the flyleaf, title page, epigraph, the choice of font and use of white space, to the final quiet illustration on the last page, it is a most beautiful and elegant book.

In the Book Trust interviewe the artist Jim Kay gives credit to the book designer Art Director Ben Norland :
“Ben was brilliant, he knew exactly how this book would work, and he would remind me to keep returning to the text. I know that sounds obvious you'd be amazed how quickly illustrators start noodling off in the wrong direction, and some of the monsters I made in the beginning were nothing like Patrick's description. The text is everything, and Ben never lost focus.”

Walker Books, founded by Sebastian Walker, is a watchword for quality in children’s literature. Their Australian website has some rich and inspiring teaching resources so it worth exploring their site.

As part of their book promotion, Walker UK ran a blog tour in May, with interviews and extracts on different blogs which leads to many other tangential discoveries too…

Here is the first one stop on the tour The Mountains of Instead
and each subsequent stop on the tour takes you to another interesting teen fiction blog, but as for the extracts, get the physical, illustrated book and settle down to read it all..
Seredipity Reviews
Wondrous Reads
Empire of books etc

And just to finish, some words of high praise from praiseworthy authors in their own rights…
Frank Cottrell Boyce - "Ness, Dowd, Kay and Walker have rifled death's pockets and pulled out a treasure."
Philip Pullman – “Compelling… powerful and impressive.”
Meg Rosoff – “Exceptional… This is storytelling as it should be – harrowing, lyrical and transcendent.”