Chronicles of a Lizard Nobody

Great News! Zeke and his best friends Daniel and Alicia have been given the very noble task of being school hall monitors! Sure, they’re also the only monitor lizards at their school, but according to Principal Wombat, that’s definitely just a coincidence. Coincidence or not, being a hall monitor is hard work, especially when there are shouty hawks to befriend, France-shaped family curses to overcome (zut alors!) and super-villainous pelicans to defeat.

Chronicles of a Lizard Nobody, Patrick Ness’s middle-grade fiction debut, is brimming with irrepressible energy and heartfelt sincerity. Countless moments of zany creativity and humour share the page with deft explorations of complex topics like mental illness, privilege and disability without anything feeling out of place. Setting the story in a school for animals is a fantastic choice which allows Ness to make brilliant gags (what’s more terrifying than a pony with a superiority complex?) but also opens the story up to discussions of school cliques and the dangers of stereotypes, as our scaly heroes find themselves outsiders in a warm-blooded world.

Happily nestled between the fairly serious and the deeply silly, Chronicles of a Lizard Nobody is a delightful story that left me very excited to see where Patrick Ness goes next.