Chronicles of a Lizard Nobody (Chronicles of a Lizard Nobody, 1) - Softcover

Ness, Patrick

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1536244392 ISBN 13: 9781536244397

Verlag: Walker Books Us, 2025

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"Utterly original, absolutely brilliant, and delightfully surprising. This author-illustrator dream team have done one of the hardest things there is to do: put together a book that is at once profound and preposterously fun." —Jarrett Lerner, author of A Work in Progress

When Principal Wombat makes monitor lizards Zeke, Daniel, and Alicia hall monitors, Zeke gives up on popularity at his new school. Brought in as part of a district blending program, the monitor lizards were mostly ignored before. Reptiles aren’t bullied any more than other students, but they do stick out among zebras, ostriches, and elk. Why would Principal Wombat make them hall monitors? Alicia explains that it’s because mammals are afraid of being yelled (hissed) at by reptiles. The principal’s just a good general, deploying her resources. Zeke balks, until he gets on the wrong side of Pelicarnassus. More than a bully, the pelican is a famed international supervillain—at least when his mother isn’t looking. Maybe the halls are a war zone, and the school needs a hero. Too bad it isn’t . . . Zeke. Smart, relatable, and densely illustrated in black and white for graphic appeal, this middle-grade series debut by a revered author returns to his themes of grief, bullying, and negotiating differences—but with zeal and comic relief to spare.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Patrick Ness is the New York Times best-selling author of A Monster Calls (inspired by an idea from Siobhan Dowd), which won both the Carnegie Medal and the Kate Greenaway Medal, was a Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist, and was made into a major motion picture for which he wrote the screenplay. He is also the author of the critically acclaimed and best-selling Chaos Walking trilogy, More Than This, Release, Different for Boys, The Rest of Us Just Live Here, and Burn. His many accolades include two Carnegie Medals, an Olivier Award, the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize, the Book Trust Teenage Prize, and the Costa Children’s Book Award. Patrick Ness lives in Los Angeles.

Tim Miller is the author-illustrator of Moo Moo in a Tutu, What’s Cooking, Moo Moo?, Tiny Kitty, Big City, and Izzy Paints. He is also the illustrator of Horse Meets Dog by Elliott Kalan, Snappsy the Alligator (Did Not Ask to Be in This Book) and Snappsy the Alligator And His Best Friend Forever! (Probably) by Julie Falatko, Margarash by Mark Riddle, and the middle-grade series Hamstersaurus Rex by Tom O’Donnell. He lives in New Jersey with his wife and three rescue cats.

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1
Hall Monitors
“I’m making you both Hall Monitors,” Principal Wombat said, though she quickly added, “This isn’t because you’re monitor lizards.”
   Zeke couldn’t help himself. “But all the other Hall Monitors have been.”
   “Coincidence,” Principal Wombat interrupted. “You’ll make sure other students aren’t in the hallways when they shouldn’t be. Which is why we coincidentally call it monitoring.” She looked slightly flustered, but what did it matter if a Principal was flustered? What sort of kid was going to point this out?
   “You look flustered,” said Daniel. Zeke elbowed him in the side. “Ow!”
   “It’s all pretty easy,” Principal Wombat continued, as if Daniel hadn’t said anything. “If you see someone out of class when you’re monitoring, you ask them for their hall pass. If they have one, all is well. If they don’t, you send them to me. Any questions?”
   “I have a question,” Daniel said. “Is it true you can use your butt as armor?”
   “Yes,” said Principal Wombat. “It’s a wombat thing. Anything else?”
   “What if they don’t have a hall pass and they don’t want to go see you?” Zeke asked.
   “Then you take down their name, and you tell me they didn’t want to go.”
   Zeke thought about this. “This isn’t going to make us very popular.”
   “But you’ll be serving the school.” Principal Wombat smiled. “And you’ll be making me happy.”
   “Well, I mean, that’s a nice thing,” Zeke said, “but I can’t help but think it’s still something to do with us being monitor lizards, me and Daniel.”
   Daniel nodded in agreement, then said, “Getting back to the butt. Is it made of steel? Like a tank?”
   Principal Wombat shook her head. “Just bone. If we’re under threat, we go headfirst into a hole in the ground, and our backside protects us from predators.”
   “Cool,” Daniel said appreciatively.
   “Because Alicia is a monitor lizard, too,” Zeke said, referring to the only other Hall Monitor currently in school.
   “Another coincidence. Besides, I thought you’d be happy to be Hall Monitors with your friend.”
   “Just because we’re lizards doesn’t mean we’re automatically friends.”
   Principal Wombat looked surprised. “You’re not friends with Alicia?”
   “Of course we’re friends with Alicia,” Zeke said, “but not just because she’s another lizard.”
   “Oh, good,” Principal Wombat said, relieved.
   “I do like my students to get along. Now, you’ll perform your duties in the morning after first bell and before and after lunch. You’ll get special permission to be late to your own classrooms! And”—she looked really excited now—“you get sashes!”
   She held out two red sashes. Daniel and Zeke just stared at them. She tossed them across the desk with her furry, stumpy arms, basically throwing them over Zeke’s and Daniel’s heads. The one for Daniel came all the way down to his knees, but Zeke’s barely went past his shoulders.
   Zeke fingered the plastic material and noticed it was slightly stained. Daniel looked up at Principal Wombat. “Can we get butt armor instead?”
 
2
Monitoring The Halls
“I still think it’s because we’re monitor lizards,” Zeke said, standing in the hallway before lunch with Daniel and Alicia, all three in their grubby red sashes of various fits.
   “What’s because we’re monitor lizards?” Alicia asked, absentmindedly chewing her gum.
   “That Principal Wombat made us all Hall Monitors.”
   “Nah, that’s just coincidence.” She moved her gum from one cheek to another. “So, it’s not the big kids you have to worry about,” she said. “It’s the little ones. They’re either crying about something or they think you’re their mom.”
   Alicia stared down the hallway as she said this, so Zeke wasn’t sure if he was supposed to respond or not. Alicia was always like this, never quite looking you in the eye, possibly never even listening to you, almost certainly thinking about something else. Zeke and Daniel had known her since preschool, when they were teeny, tiny lizards, no bigger than newts, forty percent tail and fifty percent eyes. They’d shared an incubator—it was just a white towel under a light bulb—but once you shared an incubator with a lizard, that lizard stayed your friend.
   “Do we get to blow them up if they don’t have their hall pass?” Daniel asked.
   “Yes,” Alicia said.
   “No!” Zeke said. “Principal Wombat said to send them to her if they don’t have a pass.”
   “And she blows them up,” said Alicia.
   “No, she doesn’t.”
   “We don’t know that,” Daniel said. “I think she does. With her butt.”
   “Her armored butt,” agreed Alicia.
   “There’s no blowing up—”
   “Here they come,” Alicia said, still staring down the hall. Zeke and Daniel looked where she was staring. The hall was quiet. No doors opened.
   “What?” Zeke asked, but then the lunch bell rang, every door opened, and they were suddenly stones in a river of their classmates.
   “HALL PASS!” Daniel yelled at the top of his lungs. A small gazelle dropped her pencil case and started crying. “HALL PASS!” Daniel screamed at her.
   “They don’t need their hall passes until the bell rings again and everyone’s supposed to be in the cafeteria,” Zeke said, helping up the gazelle, who took her pencil case from him, then bucked him in the knee and ran off. “Hey!” Zeke yelled after her.
   “What did I tell you?” Alicia said. “It’s the little ones you have to watch out for.”
   Zeke pulled up the leg of his shorts to make sure his knee and France were okay.
   “You all right?” he asked his knee.
   “Zut alors!” said a small voice. But this was what France always said when they got bumped, so he let his shorts leg go and readjusted his sash.
   The lizards waited as their schoolmates filed in to lunch. The other pupils mostly ignored them, as they had ever since the lizards started being bused in from—if Zeke was being honest or someone else wasn’t being polite—the poorer area of town as part of a program in the school district to get different types of students mixing together. Being ignored suited the lizards fine, usually. At this school, that included the three monitors, plus a group of geckos who played in the school marching band, and a Komodo dragon with terrible breath who everyone—mammal, bird, and lizard alike—avoided. “Gosh, poor Beth,” Zeke said, thinking about her. She was...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Walker Books Us
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2025
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1536244392
• ISBN 13: 9781536244397
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Zeichner: Miller Tim
• Anzahl der Seiten: 199
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Giunti Editore; n.pederzini@terminaldistribuzione.com; ; Via Bruno Buozzi, 24/26,; Granarolo dell'Emilia BO,; 40057; Italien