YA Book Review: A Monster Calls

A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Monster is metaphor. Monster is metaphor for cancer.

Monster is metaphor for the fear and sadness haunting those who watch loved ones slip away--for coming to terms with loss.

Monster is metaphor for the truth.

In A Monster Calls, by Patrick Ness, a yew tree visits an adolescent boy at midnight. In the spirit of A Christmas Carol, this monster comes to tell the boy three stories so that afterwards the boy can tell the monster his own story--a true story. A very hard to admit story. A story built on words so awfully difficult to say--what he can't bring himself to say to his dying mother: "I don't want you to go."

I need to take a step back and put the book into context--Ness wrote the book for author Siobhan Down, who lost her bought with cancer in 2007. A Monster Calls was inspired from notes she compiled for a fifth book. As Ness shares in the Author's Note, "This would have been her fifth book. She had the characters, a premise, and a beginning. What she didn't have unfortunately, was time."

Additionally, the illustrations by Jim Kay enhance the jagged darkness of the tale. A combined effect of etchings, wood cuttings, and collages, they strike me as cross between Jackson Pollack meets Andrew Wyeth meets Lynd Ward.

A wave of YA literature had been tackling heavy issues--issues that consume the curiosity of some adolescents. A Monster Calls deals with the stomach-wrenching reality of losing a loved one to cancer so respectfully and plainly, that this should be thought of as healthy read.

Literature is often the way into difficult topics--the great leveler when we do not have the words ourselves. I think of music as the place where so many people, particularly teens, turn for moments of shared heartache, joy, loss, etc. How often did we, as teens, sit alone in our rooms singing lyrics, following the lyrics on an album jacket or CD cover? YA has been bravely taking on that mantle as well in the unique way that only literature can provide--this novel continues that impressive and welcome trend.

A superb piece of art, and a sensitive approach to encouraging conversation with adolescents about one aspect of our humanity, I strongly recommend A Monster Calls for your classroom library.







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Literally Putting a Frame Around Them

A framed theater poster from a 1999 production of The Diary of Anne Frank fell from the wall in my classroom.  Its glass shattered across the space in the empty room over the weekend.

I thought I was saving the signed poster as I cleaned the fragments from the floor.  Instead, I found a new resource for my classroom: the frame.

Still intact, it brought me back to something I read in Kathryn Bomer's Hidden Gems: Naming and Teaching from the Brillance in Every Child's Writing:

If we have to literally put a frame around a piece of writing to get kids to see their work as art then that is what we must do.

My teaching of writing has shifted in recent years--I no longer write on student writing.  Using post-its and face-to-face conferring, I am trying to elevate their perception of themselves in their own eyes.  This includes their writing...this especially includes their writing.

While I use a large bulletin in a main hallway to display student writing, and while I hang a variety of pieces throughout the classroom, I have not yet used a frame to isolate a piece of writing.

What an experiment thus far.

Placing the frame directly over a portion of the class white board, I place a new piece of student writing inside each day.  It has created a buzz...whose piece will show up next?  Students gather around the bulletin boards and they scan the many one-pagers/book reviews posted around the room, but the energy and smile the simple frame has generated has been quite a happy accident.

The frame opened up another avenue for me--highlighting student quizzes and tests.  As this is a writing class, I teach vocabulary by asking students to write.  Our vocabulary assessments are not the multiple choice/fill-in-the-blank garden variety that I used for many years.  Students now write fluid passages using any five words from our list of twenty.  They do not know what the topic will be--I've found that forces the students to be ready for anything and therefore willing to study all twenty words.

I stress context when I grading these quizzes--remember this is a vocabulary assessment so take the time as a writer to demonstrate that you understand the word.  We practice this together as a large class and in small groups.  Over the course of the year, they are getting better at writing with context and I believe they are truly learning some words well--some words are truly becoming embedded in their written vocabulary.  I am seeing more of our vocabulary of study showing up in more of their work.

I hadn't displayed exemplary pieces of these quizzes in class--I have placed them on an overhead/Elmo/Promethean board and talked through what makes it strong writing, but I hadn't displayed it.  I hadn't set a frame around a test or a quiz.

By using the simple frame I see the evidence that more students are seeing what they do as a piece of art...which is just another way of saying important...valued...special.

Or elevating them in their own eyes.