A Monster Calls in Mock Newbery 2026

Mar 24, 2013 Steph rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I actually read ‘A Monster Calls’ some time ago, but have since taught it and read it once again. Twice in about 3 months! Was it worth it? YES!!!! This is the best YA book if not the best book I have read this year and there have been a few. I don’t often cry at books. I cried when I read this, cried when I read it a second time and had to restrain myself when I read it to me rather rambunctious Year 8 class. So having delayed my review, I am still not sure where to begin. It is just brilliant I actually read ‘A Monster Calls’ some time ago, but have since taught it and read it once again. Twice in about 3 months! Was it worth it? YES!!!! This is the best YA book if not the best book I have read this year and there have been a few. I don’t often cry at books. I cried when I read this, cried when I read it a second time and had to restrain myself when I read it to me rather rambunctious Year 8 class. So having delayed my review, I am still not sure where to begin. It is just brilliant writing – subtle, sensitively written and deeply emotive without sentimentality. Even if you do not like YA, you should read ‘A Monster Calls’! and I have endlessly recommended it to friends. I don’t even know how to classify it: perhaps somewhere between fairy tale and ‘Tuesday’s with Morrie’ (another fabulous novel),but for a younger audience.

The novel is actually based on an idea by Siobhan Dowd, a great children’s novelist who sadly died and was then taken up by Patrick Ness. It is therefore very different to his ‘Chaos Walking’ series so do not think you are going to experience the same dystopian alien world. This is a novel painfully grounded in reality.

Conor has been suffering the nightmare for a long time so when the monster appears in his dream, he is not even afraid only a little frustrated and then hopeful… because this is not the nightmare, this is just a tree and a tree who has come walking not to terrify, not to destroy, not to launch him into a new hellish world…but to tell him stories. However, the tree also demands a deal: he will tell Conor three stories, stories based on the Yew tree’s thousands of years of experience, but at the end of the three stories, Conor will tell him his own story – the fourth tale and this, must be the truth. Easy, no big deal – it’s a story! However, what the tree teaches us and Conor is that stories are ‘wild things’ they have teeth and can ‘bite’ and the truth is the most painful of all…

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Ness intersperses the tree’s visits and the stories he tells, with a secondary narrative – Conor’s real life, which in many regards is more terrible and painful than any story he can deliver: Conor lives with his mother, who has cancer; he does not get on with his interfering and fastidious grandmother and his father has abandoned them for a new family in America and barely knows how to address his own son any more. Moreover, Conor’s only recourse has been to retreat into himself so school is ever more painful, a place where if he is not bullied, he is invisible. So when the tree comes walking, Conor is not afraid because all he can see, all he can imagine, all he can envisage is hope.

What makes this novel so great?

This is a novel that deals with a very difficult, emotional subject and yet does so with sensitivity and not sentimentality, which is ultimately what makes it so moving.
This is also a novel that teaches us about the power of stories – not merely those we invent, but our own.
This is a novel that superbly mixes fantasy and reality: there is a terrible brutality about Conor’s waking life and yet the interweaving of the tree’s fairytalesque narratives is seamless and beautifully mirrors what is occurring in his real life.
This is a novel with a moving message for any individual suffering loss.
This is also a novel that draws wonderfully on pagan mythology through the image of the yew tree and its healing properties as well as references to the green man and Herne the hunter. It is through myth and story that the tree teaches Conor just as myth and story teach us. There also feels as if (and it maybe my own pagan tendencies) there is a message about the natural process of things and the need to accept both the beauty and effulgence of nature at the same time as its cruelty. It is a novel full of ambiguities that defies definition and simple happy endings just as it defies categorisation either of its form or characters.
Lastly, a word has to be given for the illustrations. There are two versions of this book that you could buy. One is your standard novel; the other is an illustrated version with images by Jim Kay. I am very, very lucky in that when I chose to teach this novel, by Head of Department agreed to invest in the illustrated version (a class set of 30, which is no mean expense – thank you Petey!). It is worth it! Jim Kay’s wonderful illustrations really enhance the narrative. Their monochrome quality reflects the melancholic nature of Conor’s existence; mirrors the imprisoning nature of his circumstances especially at school and compliments the nightmarish world established by the yew tree. They are so evocative and vivid that the text springs to life.

This is a book that moves you: it deals with grief better than almost any I have encountered and it is simultaneously a work of art. How it has not received more attention and more awards I do not know. It is magnificent. Read it, love it, cry over it because you undoubtedly will! Haunting, heart breaking and yet full of hope – ‘A Monster Calls’ is simply wonderful! ...more

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Oct 12, 2015 Jennifer Ochoa rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: graphic-stories, ya-kids-will-love-this, mg-kids-will-love-this

If you have not read this book yet, fix that soon. I am late to this game, but so glad I finally read this incredible piece of literature. Talk about a heart-print book...I am still living in this story, and will be for a while.

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