{"id":191,"date":"2012-02-29T09:24:08","date_gmt":"2012-02-29T09:24:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.glowscotland.org.uk\/er\/LibraryWebsite\/?p=191"},"modified":"2012-03-02T11:15:42","modified_gmt":"2012-03-02T11:15:42","slug":"a-monster-calls-by-patrick-ness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.glowscotland.org.uk\/er\/LibraryWebsite\/2012\/02\/29\/a-monster-calls-by-patrick-ness\/","title":{"rendered":"A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-Gpu6PgA6o2o\/Tdee58_16FI\/AAAAAAAAAyk\/yVnYU3QOx6w\/s1600\/555.jpg\" title=\"A Monster Calls\" class=\"alignnone\" width=\"200\" height=\"278\" \/><br \/>\n<strong>For me Patrick Ness is Jekyll and Hyde ; not in the drinks a potions and turns evil type way (though I am really not sure what he gets up to in his spare time!) but more in the like him but don&#8217;t really like his books category. <\/strong><br \/>\nHis last series &#8211; the <em>Chaos Walking<\/em> trilogy won awards left right and centre but left me cold and I know a certain English teacher who visibly cringes at his name she dislikes his books so much!<br \/>\nBut he does such nice things &#8211; he runs marathons for charity and with this latest book he is taking an idea from a lovely author; Siobhan Dowd, who died of cancer a couple of years ago and created a fascinating book; the proceeds of which will go to a charity in her honour. <\/p>\n<p>So, now we come to the book. It is a curious mix of story, illustration and fantasy. We follow Conor&#8217;s journey of discovery and loss on learning of his mother&#8217;s illness.<br \/>\nIt is an emotional book which will have you laughing and crying in the same page. &#8211; the book itself says it is &#8220;darkly mischevious and painfully funny&#8221;.<br \/>\nMy problem with it was the main character who I could not connect with. I could empathise with his pain and reactions to the situation he found himself in but I could not warm to him as a character &#8211; perhaps we are not supposed to?<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/t3.gstatic.com\/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTTqjhmRzHqSdJUCAIJL3AxTBQEvDaOZKSEzh6BCAUzJOCuylmV\" title=\"beautiful illustrations\" class=\"alignnone\" width=\"275\" height=\"183\" \/><br \/>\nThe book, as I mentioned, is illustrated and please do not think that just because a book has pictures in it it is a children&#8217;s book; this is definately a young adult fiction title. The pictures and dark and brooding and draw you in to the tale. (I actually wish more books made use of images in as clever a way as <strong>A Monster Calls<\/strong>.)<br \/>\nI shall leave it up to you to find out who or what the monster actually is or even if there is more than one.<br \/>\nWhat I would say is please get yourself a hankie or two as you will need it.<br \/>\nMrs B<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For me Patrick Ness is Jekyll and Hyde ; not in the drinks a potions and turns evil type way (though I am really not sure what he gets up to in his spare time!) but more in the like him but don&#8217;t really like his books category. His last series &#8211; the Chaos Walking [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1815,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5209],"tags":[5215,5479,5478,5248],"class_list":["post-191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-of-the-week","tag-fiction","tag-illustrations","tag-monster","tag-read"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.glowscotland.org.uk\/er\/LibraryWebsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.glowscotland.org.uk\/er\/LibraryWebsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.glowscotland.org.uk\/er\/LibraryWebsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.glowscotland.org.uk\/er\/LibraryWebsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1815"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.glowscotland.org.uk\/er\/LibraryWebsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.glowscotland.org.uk\/er\/LibraryWebsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":208,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.glowscotland.org.uk\/er\/LibraryWebsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191\/revisions\/208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.glowscotland.org.uk\/er\/LibraryWebsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.glowscotland.org.uk\/er\/LibraryWebsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.glowscotland.org.uk\/er\/LibraryWebsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}