A MONSTER CALLS
by Patrick Ness
Publisher: Candlewick; Reprint edition
Pages: 224
ISBN-13: 978-0763669089
Find it on Amazon, Goodreads
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An unflinching, darkly funny, and deeply moving story of a boy, his seriously ill mother, and an unexpected monstrous visitor.
At seven minutes past midnight, thirteen-year-old Conor wakes to find a monster outside his bedroom window. But it isn't the monster Conor's been expecting-- he's been expecting the one from his nightmare, the nightmare he's had nearly every night since his mother started her treatments. The monster in his backyard is different. It's ancient. And wild. And it wants something from Conor. Something terrible and dangerous. It wants the truth. From the final idea of award-winning author Siobhan Dowd-- whose premature death from cancer prevented her from writing it herself-- Patrick Ness has spun a haunting and darkly funny novel of mischief, loss, and monsters both real and imagined.
"The new film A Monster Calls centers around storytime. But with protagonist Conor’s (Lewis MacDougall) mother sick in bed, the task of storyteller falls to a giant tree monster (voiced by Liam Neeson), who appears to him every night at 12:07 a.m. with a new dark fairytale to tell. The Monster’s stories (featuring sorcerers and princes and ambiguous morals) are themselves animated, but the centerpiece of the story is obviously the big guy himself. In A Monster Calls: The Art and Vision Behind the Film, out now from Insight Editions, the process of creating the creature, starting with sketches and on through green-screen, is fully detailed.
In the excerpts below, fans can see how the Monster started out as illustrated sketches as animators figured out how to adapt Patrick Ness’ illustrated novel for the big screen, and then became fully-fledged." -FROM SEE THE MAKING OF THE MONSTER IN A MONSTER CALLS ART BOOK VIA EW.COM
