The True Tale of the Monster Billy Dean (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780763663094)

From master storyteller David Almond comes a gripping, exquisitely written novel about a hidden-away child who emerges into a broken world.

Billy Dean is a secret child. He has a beautiful young mother and a father who arrives at night carrying the scents of candles and incense and cigarettes. Birds fly to his window. Mice run out from his walls. His world is a carpet, a bed, pictures of the holy island, and a single locked door. His father fills his mind and his dreams with mysterious tales and memories and dreadful warnings. But then his father disappears, and Billy's mother brings him out into the world at last. He learns the horrifying story of what was saved and what was destroyed on the day he was born, the day the bombers came to Blinkbonny. The kind butcher, Mr. McCaufrey, and the medium, Missus Malone, are waiting for him. He becomes The Angel Child, one who can heal the living, contact the dead, bring comfort to a troubled world. But there is one figure who is beyond healing, who comes looking for Billy himself -- and is determined on a kind of reckoning.

Author: David Almond
ISBN-10: 0763663093
ISBN-13: 9780763663094
Publisher: Candlewick Press (MA)
Language: English
Published: 01/07/2014
Pages: 272
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 0.85lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.10w x 1.30d

Accelerated Reader:
Reading Level: 3.5
Point Value: 9
Interest Level: Upper Grade
Quiz #/Name: 164709 / True Tale of the Monster Billy Dean Telt by Hisself


Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 10/28/2013
Kirkus Reviews 11/15/2013
Booklist 12/01/2013 pg. 51
Hornbook Guide to Children 07/01/2014 - Superior,Well Above Average
Bulletin of Ctr for Child Bks 01/01/2014 pg. 255
Shelf Awareness 01/10/2014
Voice of Youth Advocates 02/01/2014 - Recommended - Better Than Most
School Library Journal 02/01/2014 pg. 99
Horn Book Magazine 03/01/2014 pg. 108
PW Best Children's Books 11/03/2014 pg. 44
PW Children's Starred Reviews 12/01/2014 pg. 100
Booklist Ed Choice Youth 01/01/2015 pg. 17