The Hat of Great Importance is about the trials and tribulations of Monitor Lizard Zeke and his friends, fellow Monitor Lizards Alicia and Daniel.
In this story, Daniel has taken to wearing a flamboyant pink hat, including to school, while Alicia has struck up a friendship with new pupil Peggy, a flounder. Daniel’s pink hat and Alicia’s friendship with Peggy unsettle Zeke, for reasons he doesn’t really want to acknowledge, but which come to threaten his relationship with his oldest friends. There’s also the added problem that someone (he strongly suspects pelican Pelicarnassus) is melting his house with a Death Ray of Death. Oh yes, and he is still carrying the country of France on his knee.
Absurd? Absolutely! But also funny, exciting, touching and full of tender, perfectly noted observations of the ups and downs of school life, and the warmth and support that true friends bring, whatever their species. Only a writer of Patrick Ness’ brilliance would attempt something like this and he pulls it off impeccably.
Totally original, totally believable, a story of how things can and should be, even if the characters are a school of animals. The pictures by Tim Miller are brilliant too.
Chronicles of a Lizard Nobody: The Hat of Great Importance Synopsis
The second book in the absurdly funny Chronicles of a Lizard Nobody series by multi-award-winning author Patrick Ness.
When Daniel arrives at the school bus stop sporting a salmon-coloured hat, Zeke is shocked. Don't only birds wear hats? As if this isn't strange enough, the school suddenly has a new student - a fish of all things - and a mysterious new Guidance Counsellor.
Meanwhile, Zeke's friends seem to have ditched him, and even his old nemesis won't give him the time of day. So when somebody melts his house with the Death Ray of Death - twice - Zeke has had enough. Just who is sabotaging his life - and why?
One of YA's most celebrated writers here turns to middle grade with a wonderfully absurd and brilliantly observed school series.
Patrick Ness is the award-winning and bestselling author of the Chaos Walking trilogy. He is also the author of critically acclaimed novels A Monster Calls, More Than This, Release, The Rest of Us Just Live Here, And the Ocean Was Our Sky and Burn.
Patrick was born on an army base called Fort Belvoir, near Alexandria, Virginia, in the United States. His father was a drill sergeant in the US Army. He lived in Hawaii until he was almost six, spent the ten years after that in suburban Washington state, and then on to Los Angeles, where he studied English Literature at the University of Southern California.
His main job after graduating was as corporate writer at a cable company, writing manuals, form letters and speeches and once even an advertisement for the Gilroy, California Garlic Festival (this is true). If you're American and hated your cable company, he probably wrote you a letter of apology.
He got his first story published in Genre magazine in 1997 and was working on his first novel when he moved to London in 1999. He's lived here ever since. Sometimes he teaches creative writing but mostly he tries to write 1,000 words a day, 'come hell or high water'.
In May 2008, he published The Knife of Never Letting Go, his first book for young adults. It won the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize and the Booktrust Teenage Prize and he hasn't looked back since.
Here is an interview with Patrick Ness where he talks about his new book The Rest of Us Just Live Here.
10 Things You Didn't Know About Patrick Ness
1. He has a tattoo of a rhinoceros. 2. He has run two marathons. 3. He is a certified scuba diver. 4. He wrote a radio comedy about vampires. 5. He has never been to New York City but... 6. He has been to Sydney, Auckland and Tokyo. 7. He got accepted into film school but turned it down to study writing. 8. He was a goth as a teenager (well, as much of a goth as you could be in Tacoma, Washington and still have to go to church every Sunday). 9. He is no longer a goth. 10. Under no circumstances will he eat onions.
