Beautifully creepy.
A Monster Calls
by Patrick Ness
Candlewick Press
Public Library e-book from Overdrive/
Library book from Junior Library Guild
[#5 in my 75 Book Challenge]
“There is not always a good guy. Nor is there always a bad one. Most people are somewhere in between.”
Oh. My. Goodness. Everyone has been talking about this one, and now I see why. Featured on Newbery and Printz hopeful lists, A Monster Calls packs a big punch in a short novel. It made me cry.
This is a story about grief, loss, loneliness, pain, and anger. The main character, Conor, is living with with his very sick mother. At night he has a recurring nightmare and he won’t speak what it’s about. He’s haunted by a monster in his dream, but he also becomes haunted by a monster in reality — the yew tree in the yard comes to Conor’s window. The Monster then tells three tales, and expects a fourth. He expects the truth, and the truth is never as simple as good vs. evil or right vs. wrong…as much as we might want it to be, that’s not how the world works.
This is a story that does things you won’t expect.
As I was reading, I could never predict what was going to happen. I thought I knew where Ness was going, what the moral might be, but then there’d be a twist or a moment that surprised me. Finally, I just had to read. Keep reading. Read to find the message in the story.There’s really no good way to describe the story. I’m struggling to create words that can explain it, but I’m falling short. The best I can do is offer this YouTube trailer, created by the publisher, to give you the basic story, mood, and tone of the tale:
Final Grade: A+ (OH. SNAP.)
The kicker: I think it’s better than Okay For Now, at least on a few levels. Equal on all levels. I’d recommend it to everyone. I’ve been gushing about Okay for Now winning the Newbery for months, but now I’m not so sure. We’ll know soon enough. All of the ALA Youth Media Awards will be announced on January 23, and I can’t wait to see what they decide.
Note: The original story was the creation of Siobhan Dowd, an author who died of breast cancer at 47. This fact added even more emotional impact to the story, in my opinion.
It’s no secret that Book Club is one of my favorite parts of being a school librarian. The book clubbers finished A Wrinkle in Time last week, and I challenged them to think about their favorite books read in 2011 and their favorite books of all time. As a special treat, I’m sharing a few of the lists with you:
These are all sixth graders. I’m impressed by the things they like to talk about and the variety of books they read and discuss with their friends. Reading truly is a social activity (isn’t that why you’re reading this?) and sharing these lists among the group got the kids even more excited about their future reads in 2012.
Today we will start our next read, The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle by Avi. The book clubbers have been actually physically WIGGLING with anticipation since I gave them some teasers about the book last week. So far all they know is that there are secret plots and murder in the story, but they can’t wait! I hope my love for the novel is contagious (it’s my #7 favorite book of all time).
The more I look at this cover, the more I like it.
A Wrinkle In Time
by Madeleine L’Engle
[#56 in my 52 60 book challenge]
I started this book in 1995. It took me sixteen years to finish it and move it from the “currently reading” pile to the bookshelf. I think I can rest easy tonight with a smug smile on my face because I have accomplished something great today.
Okay, that’s all a bit of a stretch, but I really did give up on this book in the fifth grade and I’ve always said I would come back to it one day and finish it.
Unless you live under a rock, you have at least heard of A Wrinkle In Time and the tesseract/time travel business. I was surprised to find that the plot was more simple than I had remembered. Meg Murry’s father, a scientist, has been missing for many years. One day three mysterious ladies come and take Meg Murry and her youngest brother, Charles Wallace, so save their father. A schoolmate, Calvin O’Keefe, is along for the ride. They tesser across the universe and across time to different planets and stumble across The Dark Thing and great evil while trying to get all the family members home safely.
My favorite part of the story was Camazotz, the weird planet where everyone does everything at the exact same time. It was creepy and mysterious, but also very close to the themes we see in dystopian literature about control. I also like Charles Wallace quite a bit and wanted to know what his deal was. The basic story was okay. It didn’t blow my mind and make me squeal, “OMG, this is my new favorite book!” I know sooooo many people that feel that way, but I just don’t get it. Do it need to read it twenty more times? Do I need to tesser back twenty years and read it then? Someone help me shed some light on this.
The big things I didn’t get mostly involve Calvin O’Keefe. Why was he even there? And what does he end up seeing in Meg? Yeah, Meg has this great quality to love, but she’s not all that special. I don’t doubt that Meg and Calvin could fall in love over time, but it seemed very quick to me. “Hey, I just met you and you are completely average in every way, but I’m going to hold your hand and make googley eyes at you, okay?”
Maybe I’m just too old for this. I missed the boat and missed the magic of this kids classic. Maybe I need to read it a few more times and revel in the liberal religious aspects of the story (L’Engle was an Episcopalian, it seems). My book club kids thought the story was okay, but they still far preferred When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead. I think I feel the same way.
Oct 8
This gallery contains 12 photos.
Yikes, my TBR pile is getting HUGE! For those not down with the lingo (yes, I just said that), TBR means “To Be Read.” All bibliophiles proudly complain about how big their TBR piles are. It’s the never ending struggle to read all that we wish to read…which never happens. Being a librarian, I am […]
My students have been super excited about starting a book club at our school, and the club has been a great success so far. We have started our year reading When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead, and we are about halfway through the novel.
At this week’s meeting, we made notes about all of the strange things that have happened in the book on index cards. When You Reach Me is full of strange events, and I have told the kids that all of these “questions” will have answers by the end. The index cards let us share theories about why these things have happened to make predictions about the story. In addition, we will use the cards to make a timeline at the end of the story because time is such an important element in the conclusion. We will also be able to pull out each card and talk about each event at the end, and make sure that all of our loose ends were, indeed, tightened up.
I thought I’d share their work, since it ended up being such a fun activity. There was so much animated discussion at our table and the kids we completely engrossed in the conversations. We made sure to note the page numbers for each event so they can be referenced lated (some kids noted the pages on the back of the card).
We will finish When You Reach Me in two weeks, and then we’ll move into A Wrinkle In Time by Madeleine L’Engle. Since When You Reach Me references A Wrinkle In Time and was inspired by L’Engles stories, I think it will be the perfect choice!
They give you pills for the stirrings.
4.) The Giver by Lois Lowry
Dystopian novel? Check. Newberry Award winner? Definitely. YA novel? Of course. Would you expect anything less of me? I’m starting to see some patterns in this list. I guess I know what I like?
The Giver is about a futuristic society run by sameness. Everyone dresses the same, has the same birthday, lives in family units that are the same, etc. At first this dystopia appears to be a utopia — the Pleasantville-like society is pain-free, crime-free, and everyone has everything they need. However, this type of utopia comes with a price. Would you give up music, love, and emotions to be safe and orderly?
I read this book in the sixth grade, and I clearly remember thinking that our society was eerily similar to the community in the book. We go to school, we go to college, we get a job, we pay our taxes. We do what we are supposed to do. I thought this story was a cautionary tale about becoming drones in world and failing to recognize the beauty in the world, the good things in life.
I read this book in ninth grade and I remember fixating on the government in the story. This society is the result of socialism to the extreme. Socialism sounds great in theory, but is that how people are really supposed to live? How can one be an individual in such a society, and is that even necessary? I wanted to know how the government managed to take so much control over these people, and what had gone so bad in the world to make that necessary.
Now, as an adult, I am looking at this book in a different way. A fellow teacher just read the book and was inspired by it. She brought it back and felt that students need to read it. It’s a book about standing up for what you know is right. The book makes readers wonder if they are a Jonas, challenging the status quo and looking for truth, or if they are more like the other members of the community. I had always seen the book as more political, but the conversations we’ve had about the novel recently have helped me see that the themes in the novel are applicable in so many situations.
"A sailor chooses the wind that takes the ship from safe port...but winds have a mind of their own."
7.) The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle by Avi
When asked who my favorite author is, I never think to answer “Avi!” But, if I really think about it, I’ve never read a bad Avi book. All of his books are so different, but none of them hold a candle to my favorite: The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle. The cover cannot do the story justice — this is an adventure book that kept me turning pages, even if the cover makes it look like a dull historical novel.
“Not every 13-year-old girl is accused of murder, brought to trial, and found guilty. But I was just such a girl, and my story is worth relating even if it did happen years ago. Be warned, however, that this is no Story of a Bad Boy, no What Katy Did. If strong ideas and action offend you, read no more. Find another companion to share your idle hours. For my part I intend to tell the truth as I lived it.”
Charlotte Doyle is one kick-ass book with a kick-ass female protagonist. Charlotte is travelling alone on a ship to America to reunite with her family in 1832, but the two-month journey is filled with murder, intrigue, and mutiny. Charlotte is a typical wealthy 13-year-old girl in 1832 at the start of the book, but by the end she is a strong-willed, brave, hard-working girl who rejects the rules gender and class that she has always been taught.
What I love about the story is that it appeals to all genders: I read this novel with my 6th graders one year, and they were so into it that they wouldn’t let me stop reading. My days reading Charlotte Doyle with students are some of my favorite memories from my time in the classroom. The novel was also featured on Bitch Magazine’s list of 100 Young Adult Books for the Feminist Reader, and rightly so. It is also a 1991 Newberry Honor book.
Watch out for those yellow-spotted lizards. Just sayin'.
9.) Holes by Louis Sachar
I read this one in a single sitting when I was 14. Holes is the winner of the 1999 Newberry Award and is now a popular book in elementary and middle school classrooms — for good reason! The novel combines three plots. The first is the story of Stanley Yelnats, a boy sent to a juvenille detention camp for a crime he didn’t commit. The second is the story of Stanley’s great-great grandfather, Elya Yelnats, and the curse he brings up the family name. The third story is the legend of Kissing Kate Barlow and her buried treasure. All three stories are interwoven throughout the book, with the ending tying everything together.
This is a book with elements of magic, realistic fiction, and American Tall Tales, and it does all three well. It’s also a funny book, an adventure book, and (at times) a terribly depressing book. You can’t read Holes without pondering how cruddy it would be to have to dig a hole five feet in diameter by five feet deep every single day for eighteen months. In the heat of Texas. Where it hasn’t rained for one hundred years. Yeah, not cool.
But it makes for a cool book.
When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead
12.) When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead
When I found out this book was the winner of the 2010 Newberry Award, I decided to give it a try. I had no clue what the book was even about, and I’m sort of glad I didn’t. Would I have picked up this book if someone has described it to me? How would you even describe it? The best I can come up with is that it is a book about time travel, A Wrinkle in Time, growing up in New York, The $20,000 Pyramid, a lost house key, a man with amnesia sleeping under the mailbox, and a mysterious note.
And of course it is science fiction…but (surprise!) not a dystopian novel and it actually takes place in 1979. It’s quite a pleasant, happy book. It’s one of those great books where most of the details don’t make sense until the very end, but the ending is so satisfying that it requires a second read. It’s a time travel book for people who don’t like time travel books. It both historical fiction and science fiction, but not steam punk fiction. It’s an interesting little book, and it’s one of my favorites.
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