Conor, the main character faces an absent father in America, a seriously ill mother, a fussy grandmother, bullies at school and nightmares. What I find amazing is that the book has got so many very positive reviews on Amazon.

I agree with her, I won't give it to my younger daughter, and I certainly wouldn't recommend it to any children under 16 or so. My 16 year old read the first 50 pages or so, and didn't like it, so I had a go. Because of this, it was given to my daughters to read at their teenage reading group organised by the local library. This novel won the Carnegie Children's Book Award and the Kate Greenaway Award for its illustrations. It wants the truth.įrom the final idea of award-winning author Siobhan Dowd-whose premature death from cancer prevented her from writing it herself-Patrick Ness has spun a haunting and darkly funny novel of mischief, loss, and monsters both real and imagined. The monster in his backyard is different. But it isn't the monster Conor's been expecting- he's been expecting the one from his nightmare, the nightmare he's had nearly every night since his mother started her treatments. Īt seven minutes past midnight, thirteen-year-old Conor wakes to find a monster outside his bedroom window.

It was the first book ever whose author and illustrator, one person or two, have won both prizes. A Monster Calls won both the Carnegie Medal and the Greenaway Medal in 2012, for the book and illustrations, respectively. The novel is 'from an original idea by Siobhan Dowd', who thought of the idea during her own terminal illness from cancer, but died before she could finish it. A Monster Calls is a children's fantasy novel, written by Patrick Ness, illustrated by Jim Kay, and published in 2011.

Jim kay a monster calls