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Nancy Keane's | Booktalks -- Quick and Simple | |
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Ness,
Patrick.
A MONSTER CALLS Somerville, MA : Candlewick Press, 2011 IL YA ISBN 0763655597 |
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Every
night at seven minutes past midnight, a monster visits Conor.
But it’s not the monster from his nightmare--the nightmare he’s been having
every night since his mother started cancer treatments. The one with
the darkness and the wind and the screaming.
This monster is different. It’s ancient and wild. It’s from his backyard, a huge treelike form, with his uppermost branches twisted into a face with a huge, gaping mouth. Conor assumes it’s just his imagination, these nightly visits, only…only in the morning, there are leaves and branches on the floor. When this monster comes to visit him, Conor finds he’s not actually afraid of him. And he tells the monster so. Because “I’ve seen worse,” Conor tells him. But this monster assures him that he’ll be afraid of him soon enough. Before it’s over…the monster will get the truth out of him. A Monster Calls is a heart-wrenching story of loss, of love, and of growing up. Conor must face fears that no child should face – the slow, painful death of a parent. A feeling of displacement in your world, when your world turns upside down. When your dad’s living far away and involved with his new family. When your grandma comes to stay and you can’t seem to keep yourself tidy enough for her. Patrick Ness, the author of the Chaos Walking Trilogy for young adults, wrote A Monster Calls based on an idea and characters by Siobhan Dowd, who lost her battle with cancer. The book is filled with beautiful illustrations by Jim Kay. (NH Isinglass Teen Award nominee, 2013) |
| SUBJECTS:
Self-actualization (Psychology) -- Fiction.
Monsters -- Fiction. Mothers and sons -- Fiction. Schools -- Fiction. Single-parent families -- Fiction. Breast cancer -- Fiction. Loss (Psychology) -- Fiction. England -- Fiction. |
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