Patrick Ness is speaking at Verb Readers and Writer Festival and the Auckland Writers Festival. Photo: Walker Books/Helen Giles
For over 20 years, Patrick Ness has captivated teen readers with "very dark" novels like A Monster Calls and Chaos Walking.
In Chronicles of a Lizard Nobody - his new book for eight- to 11-year-olds - the award-winning young-adult writer leans hard into absurdist comedy with the story of a monitor lizard who becomes a hall monitor.
"To just discover all the emotional colours you can paint within the absurdity, what a delight. I loved the absurd as a kid and I loved it when I was laughing unexpectedly while being moved."
Patrick Ness: Teenage talk is filthy
Patrick Ness is visiting NZ this month for the Verb Readers and Writer Festival and the Auckland Writers Festival. He will be in Wellington 8 and 10 November and 12 November in Auckland.
For a long time, Ness thought his story of Zeke the monitor lizard was "far too ridiculous" to be a book but he couldn't stop coming up with comedic moments in his life that kids would relate to.
"Be funny and crazy but also do tender things" is the trick to writing for a younger crowd, he figured out.
Grief and bullying appeared in Chronicles of a Lizard Nobody because they were a fact of life for many kids, Ness said.
"When I was a kid I didn't like books that told me about a world that I couldn't recognise, one that was free of those things. I liked being told the truth even if the truth was sometimes difficult.
" I love him [Zeke] so much and I just want to tell the truth for him. I want to acknowledge that he's got some burdens and I want to acknowledge that things aren't always so easy... I think gosh, if I can cram all that in that feels like a rich, rich brew to me."
Ness chose illustrator Tim Wilson for the "exactly deadpan" look he gave the young lizard. Photo: Candlewick Press
"If Wes Anderson wrote a middle-grade story" was the brief Ness gave illustrator Tim Wilson for bringing Zeke's story to life.
He chose Wilson for the "exactly deadpan" look he gave the young lizard.
"There's so much expression in two little circles and two little dots... and that's just a miracle to me.
"When collaboration works the best... together we make something better than the most of both of us. And I am fine with with my ego on that level. I'm fine with somebody bringing great stuff to my book... to make it better and better. I find it really, really joyous. I love seeing what illustrators bring to life from my words. What a treat."
As a reader, Ness gives a book just 40 or 50 pages before deciding whether or not to ditch it.
"I've got enough hubris to think that if I'm not interested by then, and it's the book's fault or something."
With so many books in the world, we should never waste time reading boring ones, he said.
"I never want to write a boring book. I never want to read a boring book. There's so many. Read stuff you love. It shouldn't be a chore. It shouldn't be a test. I mean, you can read testing stuff and you can be challenged and you can read difficult books. But there should always be a level of... there should be a level of joy.
"I'm currently reading The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk which is 950-odd pages by a possible messiah in 1700s Poland. I have no frame of reference for any of that, but it's joyous and it's long and it's challenging and it's things that I am not familiar with. I'm persisting because it's amazing. If a book hasn't thrilled you put it down."
Ness himself was less than impressed by another famous Chronicles for children - the 1950s Narnia series - because the writer CS Lewis didn't understand childhood, he said.
"At one point the children all become kings and queens and have full lives as kings and queens then return through the wardrobe and forget it all.
Lewis viewed childhood "as a bit of nice play time that we should then forget and put away", Ness said.
"I think he's exactly wrong. He's entirely wrong that the things that happen to us when we're young are just as important as the things that happen to us when we're adults.
"What is happening in the day of an eight-year-old or a 14-year-old is just as important as what's happening in the day of a 41-year-old?
"They're living right now. And the experiences of a child in a day are valid and worth cherishing and worth examining."