If I'd felt hampered at all – again, even for very good reasons – then that harms the story, I think. Īfter winning the Carnegie, Ness discussed the writing with The Guardian newspaper: I wouldn't have taken it on if I didn't have complete freedom to go wherever I needed to go with it. Later, Walker and Ness arranged for Jim Kay to illustrate it, but Ness and Kay did not meet until after it was published in May 2011.

After Dowd's death in August 2007, Walker arranged for Ness to write the story. She discussed it and contracted to write it with editor Denise Johnstone-Burt at Walker Books, who also worked with Patrick Ness. Siobhan Dowd conceived the novel while she had cancer. The novel was adapted into the 2016 film of the same name. A Monster Calls is the only book to have won both awards. Ness and Kay respectively won the Carnegie Medal and the Greenaway Medal in 2012, the 'year's best' children's literary awards by the British librarians ( CILIP). Dowd was terminally ill with cancer when she came up with the idea for the story, and died before she could write it. He is repeatedly visited in the middle of the night by a monster who tells stories. Set in present-day England, it features a boy who struggles to cope with the consequences of his mother's illness. 214 pp (first edition) 152 pp (pdf edition)Ī Monster Calls is a low fantasy novel written for young adults by Patrick Ness (from an original idea by Siobhan Dowd) illustrated by Jim Kay and published by Walker in 2011.

Books like a monster calls