Patrick Ness is the author of the critically acclaimed and
best-selling Chaos Walking trilogy, which inspired a major motion
picture. His other novels include the Carnegie Medal winner A
Monster Calls (inspired by an idea from Siobhan Dowd), More Than
This, Release, The Rest of Us Just Live Here, and Burn. He has won
numerous awards, including two Carnegie Medals, the Guardian
Children’s Fiction Prize, the Book Trust Teenage Prize, and the
Costa Children’s Book Award. He also wrote the screenplay for the
film version of A Monster Calls as well as the BBC’s Doctor Who
spinoff Class. Patrick Ness lives in Los Angeles.
Tea Bendix is an award-winning illustrator, graphic
designer, author, and performer. She works across different media,
including picture books, nonfiction, apps, children's radio, and
drawings for TV. Tea Bendix lives in Denmark.
Rough pencil sketches add to the heightened emotion, reflecting the
jagged, difficult emotional realities… The brevity of this story
adds to its power, distilling the plot to its most necessary,
brutal, loving elements. [Blanking] masterful.
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
Ness delivers an authentic-feeling story that interrogates the idea
that teens are “too young to read about the stuff we actually do.”
Black-and-white pencil illustrations by Bendix provide an
expressive complement to concise, sensitive, and thought-provoking
text in this un-put-downable, easily devoured read.
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
This spare, affecting novella takes place over the first week of
eleventh grade, zeroing in on the dynamics between Ant, Charlie,
Jack, and Josh. . . Ant’s first-person narration moves between the
present day, his history with Charlie and Jack, and his reflections
on love, sex, and friendship with appealing raw-edged frankness and
humor, complemented by Tea Bendix’s sketch and collage artwork. . .
. Ness takes on the often underexplored social dynamics among
teenage boys with nuance and subtlety that will leave readers
thinking long after they turn the final page.
—The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books (starred
review)
Ness superbly blends Ant’s philosophical musings with realistically
voiced teen thoughts and dialogue, where expletives and sexual
content are curtained by heavy black rectangles yet blatantly
present. The near-melancholy tone is beautifully matched by
Bendix’s inspired artwork. . . Within this beautifully crafted
package lies a poignant story of a boy reaching out in loneliness
to another boy and grasping unvarnished truth.
—Booklist (starred review)
Ness’s postmodern short story (a version of which was previously
published in an anthology), intermittently illustrated with
Bendix’s striking pencil drawings and digital collage, candidly
depicts the relationships among several teenage boys in eastern
Washington. . . . The lean narrative moves briskly with a focus on
dialogue, dry humor, and Ant’s wonderings.
—The Horn Book
This spare story by Carnegie Medal-winner Patrick Ness says a great
deal within a limited number of pages. . . . The best quality of
this narrative is its brutal honesty. . . Young adults will
recognize the feeling of being alone as they process their own
inner monologues.
—School Library Connection
Debut illustrator Tea Bendix's striking unpolished pencil and
digital collage art depicts the characters and setting both
realistically and through visual metaphor. . . . Grayscale hallways
and classrooms, faces in profile layered one on top of the other,
figures with half their body erased all echo the brutal honesty and
the imperfect realities laid bare in the text. Ness's forceful
storytelling fused with Bendix's rich sketches result in an
achingly beautiful reflection of the multiple, messy realities and
experiences of young queerness. . . . compelling.
—Shelf Awareness
This book? A scant 104 pages of spare text, much of which is
literally redacted with a black box over it, and tons of large,
sketched illustrations? It’s daring. As usual with Ness, I laughed
at so many of the quips and the tone (at times), but also was
gutted by what the characters go through. I felt for all of them.
Ness tells a tale of toxic masculinity, homophobia, sexuality, and
loneliness. And he does it by redacting all of the 'bad' stuff. . .
Damn, Patrick Ness. Damn. Or maybe I mean [Redacted], Patrick Ness.
[Redacted.] Tell it like it is!
—Teen Librarian Toolbox
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