Patrick Ness won the 2012 CILIP Carnegie Medal for A Monster Calls. It is the second year in a row he has won the award, which makes him one of seven authors to have won the medal twice and the second to have won it in consecutive years. No one has won it three times.

A Monster Calls also won the CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal for Illustration, awarded to Jim Kay. This marks the first time in the history of the awards that both medals have been won by the same book. In 2012 Patrick won the CILIP Carnegie Medal for his book, Monsters of Men, also published by Walker.

A fantasy novel written for children (Older Readers) by Patrick Ness and based on an original idea by author Siobhan Dowd (who won the Carnegie Medal in 2009 for Bog Child), A Monster Calls was illustrated by Jim Kay and published by Walker in 2011.

Set in present-day England,
A Monster Calls stars a boy struggling to cope with the consequences of his mother’s terminal cancer; he is serially visited in the middle of the night by a monster who tells him stories – and who demands one in return

The Award The CILIP Carnegie and Kate Greenaway Children’s Book Awards are the UK’s oldest and most prestigious children’s book awards. The two Medals have been awarded annually for 76 and 56 years respectively and are judged by a panel of children’s librarians, with the CILIP Carnegie Medal being awarded for an outstanding children’s or young person’s book and The CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal being awarded for an outstanding book in terms of illustration. It is enthusiastically followed by a Shadowing Scheme of young readers, which children around the world can also join in with here.