Patrick Ness’s novel A Monster Calls, won both the prestigious Carnegie Medal and its sister prize the Kate Greenway Medal  for illustration, for the first time in the award’s history.  It is the only children’s novel to have truly blown me away since reading Philip Pullman’s Dark Material’s Trilogy.  Ness also won the Carnegie in 2001 for Monsters of Men.  He described the win as ‘extremely humbling – and a little unnerving.’ Continue reading →