The Book
We’ll be reading Mister Monday by Garth Nix, the first book in the Keys to the Kingdom Series.
Here’s the summary from Goodreads…
The book is written for a middle-grade audience and above so should be suitable for HOL members of any age. However, it does feature a high level of threat, some darker fantasy elements (particularly in chapters 16 and 17) and a fictional pandemic which some readers might find challenging.On the first day, there was mystery.
Arthur Penhaligon is not supposed to be a hero. He is, in fact, supposed to die an early death. But then his life is saved by a key shaped like the minute hand of a clock.
Arthur is safe - but his world is not. Along with the key comes a plague brought by bizarre creatures from another realm. A stranger named Mister Monday, his avenging messengers with bloodstained wings, and an army of dog-faced Fetchers will stop at nothing to get the key back - even if it means destroying Arthur and everything around him.
Desperate, Arthur ventures into a mysterious house - a house that only he can see. It is in this house that Arthur must unravel the secrets of the key - and discover his true fate.
How it Works
We’ll post discussion threads, each one covering a certain number of chapters. Once you finish that part of the book, you can post in the appropriate thread.
Threads:
Prologue and chapters 1-6
Chapters 7-12
Chapters 13-18
Chapters 19-24
Chapters 25-29
The threads will include some fun suggestions to help you structure your thoughts. If you’d rather talk about something else that occurred to you while reading though, you can ignore these suggestions entirely. There will also be some optional creative tasks that you can complete for more beans, if you like.
For the discussion portion, you can write as much or as little as you want (this is meant to be a bit of easy fun) but please do try to write at least a few lines for each topic to avoid spam. The word counts for the creative tasks will be given alongside the prompt.
You’ll earn 10 beans for every discussion you contribute to and 15 for every creative task you complete (so there are 200 available in total).
You can respond whenever you like during the month, so it doesn’t matter if it takes a while to find a copy of the book (remember you can often ask a librarian at your local library to help!) or you find you don’t have a lot of time for reading - just join in when you can.
The deadline for earning beans is 11:59 PM HOL-time on the 31st of October 2023. Happy reading!
