Zeke, the protagonist of Patrick Ness’ first middle-grade novel, Chronicles of a Lizard Nobody (Walker US/Candlewick, Sept. 3), has a lot to worry about. The school’s wombat principal taps the young monitor lizard, along with his two reptile friends, Daniel and Alicia, for hall monitor duty, but Zeke soon loses the gig after punching a pelican bully who calls him fat.

The pelican, whose mother happens to be a supervillain, is in no mood to forgive and launches a reign of terror against Zeke, at one point enlisting a squadron of tiny jets to attack the nation of France, which happens to be located on Zeke’s knee. (It’s a long story.) Zeke has problems at home, too. His mother has been severely depressed ever since the death of Zeke’s father; she’s constantly accompanied by a black dog that sometimes growls when Zeke tries to get close.

Ness can relate to Zeke’s anxiety. “I was an incredibly anxious kid,” he recalls. “Looking back, I think, Oh, you poor guy. You needed some professional help. Kids worry. It’s a worrying world, and I think it would be a lie to not acknowledge that. My job is to tell the truth about what’s hard, so that when I tell the truth about what’s good, you’ll believe me.”

Chronicles of a Lizard Nobody, illustrated by Tim Miller, is the first middle-grade book from Ness, known for his novels for adults (The Crane Wife) and young adults (the award-winning Chaos Walking trilogy). Ness lives in London and Los Angeles; he talked about the new book via Zoom from LA. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

You’ve written for adults and young adults before, but this is your first middle-grade novel. What made you want to write for this audience?

This sounds very, very artsy, but it genuinely always begins with the idea. I’d written a couple of adult books, and then I was working on what became the Chaos Walking series, and it revealed itself as YA. I remember making the decision, thinking, Great, great. There’s not going to be anything different in my process or my investment. It’s a core philosophy: The only one who tells the writer what to write is the writer. Pick any genre, any age, any medium—it’s whatever the story needs. When the very silly, lovely idea for Chronicles came up, I thought, I’m not going to write it any differently. I was following a story, and what a delight it turned out to be.

Every book has a voice. This book is just voiced for a younger audience. To me, it’s very much the same process. I’m just trying to find the true voice of this story, and whether that’s a story for 15-year-olds or for adults, it’s the same process. What is true? How does the voice of the story speak so that it’s true? So the process isn’t different; it’s just this one speaks a slightly different language. It needs to, because that’s what the story is.

How did you go about creating this world that has villainous pelicans and metalhead pandas?

The biggest defense I have is that it makes perfect sense to me! I have a long-standing theory: There’s no such thing as a realistic novel—no such thing. It might look like our world, but it’s just as much fantasy as any fantasy novel, because it’s created. We are literally in a world made just of words. If I can embrace that, then I can tell any story I want, as long as it takes place in a world where that story makes sense. That’s the goal. That’s what I’m after in every single book. And so I thought, OK, I’ve got these monitor lizards who are hall monitors—you can see the pun—so what world makes sense? How do you make that world, and then make it feel true and touching and heartbreaking when it needs to, and still be funny?

And the way you describe that world is so deadpan. You don’t draw attention to how crazy it is.

I was a very serious child, and I did not respond well to the obnoxiously adult zaniness that adults often thought that I liked. I thought, What’s their problem? My world is much more serious than this. I also love the absolute acceptance that kids have of what is normal. So of course it’s deadpan, of course the villain is a pelican, and of course his mom is a supervillain, because that’s just what’s normal for them. It’s so much funnier and so much richer if they’ve just accepted everything as part of their lives. My novel Burn was 1950s America, but with dragons. The idea was that dragons had just always been there, so nobody’s going to remark on them, because they’re just part of the world. That’s what I love as a reader, when a world is presented to me like that.

The humor in this book has appeal for adults, too. Was that deliberate?

It’s the language I speak, and it’s how I mostly speak to kids. I address the kids in my life with things that they might not always get, but they tend to laugh anyway. The thing about Hollywood comedies that don’t work is that they’re not written by people who think what they’re writing is funny. They’re written by people who are trying to guess what other people will find funny, and that’s a losing game. If I tried to write jokes that I thought an 8-year-old might like, oh, what a disaster! I don’t necessarily know what 10-year-olds find funny except what I’ve been told on television. So I’m just going to write what I think is funny. And that gives me a far better chance to actually make a [young] reader laugh, because I’m laughing. The first rule of comedy is that I have to laugh when I’m writing it, or there’s no chance of your ever laughing when you read it.

Would you say that this book was more fun to write than any of your others?

It was way more fun. I mean, it’s not that the book doesn’t have heartbreak and difficult stuff, but I love these characters so much, and I want my lizards to experience the world, for all that it hurts and for all that it’s great. I wanted to keep them safe, and keep them learning, and keep them striving. That felt great. I really, really loved making a world for them.

Any plans to bring Zeke and the gang back?

It’s definitely a stand-alone book, not a serialized thing. But there’s definitely more to come. The plot of the next one is: [Zeke’s friend] Daniel wears a hat. But it’s a world where only birds seem to wear hats. So a kerfuffle ensues—let’s put it that way. It’s not any less bananas than this one, trust me. But again, it makes perfect sense to me.

Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.