Looking for Alaska by John Green

Bibliographic Information
Publisher: Dutton Juvenile
Publication year: 2005
ISBN: 978-0142402511

Reader’s Annotation
Miles chooses boarding school for his junior year in order to seek “The Great Perhaps” and have an adventure for the first time in his life. His experiences at Culver Creek introduce him to new friends, epic pranks, strawberry wine, and an event that will change him forever.

Plot Summary
Miles is an eleventh grader with no real friends, fascinated by famous last words. He chooses to attend Culver Creek Boarding School for his junior year because he wants to seek what French poet Francois Rabelais called “The Great Perhaps.” Miles’ roommate, sarcastic southerner The Colonel, quickly nicknames Miles “Pudge” and welcomes him into life at Culver Creek. Sneaking cigarettes, booze, and girls into your room are all in a day’s work, not to mention pranking the entitled rich students who only stay on campus during the week. But for Miles, nothing is more exciting than meeting Alaska Young. She is gorgeous, witty, well-read, and Miles quickly identifies her as his dream girl. The only problem, Alaska is madly in love with her boyfriend who goes to another school. The group of friends spend the first semester engaging in silly shenanigans, until one night of drinking ends in tragedy and Pudge and The Colonel are compelled to spend the rest of the school year figuring out what went wrong.

Critical Evaluation
A striking device Green uses in the structure of Looking for Alaska is the headings of the number of days “before” and “after” at the beginning of each chapter with no explanation of the main event. As soon as the switch from before to after happens the reader understands exactly why they were there, but the first half of the book is shrouded in mystery. The reader knows something monumental is going to happen as the countdown dwindles, but is left in suspense until the transition. There is rarely such blatant attention brought to the buildup, main conflict, and aftermath of a story. The device represents how Miles sees his time at Culver Creek Boarding School: as revolving completely around Alaska. Even after she dies, he is only counting the days since and investigating exactly what happened. For this reason, Looking for Alaska stays with the reader long after the book is closed.

Author Information
John Green is the New York Times bestselling author of Looking for Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines, Paper Towns, and The Fault in Our Stars. He is also the coauthor, with David Levithan, of Will Grayson, Will Grayson. He was 2006 recipient of the Michael L. Printz Award, a 2009 Edgar Award winner, and has twice been a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Green’s books have been published in more than a dozen languages.

In 2007, Green and his brother Hank ceased textual communication and began to talk primarily through videoblogs posted to YouTube. The videos spawned a community of people called nerdfighters who fight for intellectualism and to decrease the overall worldwide level of suck. (Decreasing suck takes many forms: Nerdfighters have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to fight poverty in the developing world; they also planted thousands of trees around the world in May of 2010 to celebrate Hank’s 30th birthday.) Although they have long since resumed textual communication, John and Hank continue to upload two videos a week to their YouTube channel, vlogbrothers. Their videos have been viewed more than 500 million times, and their channel is one of the most popular in the history of online video. He is also an active Twitter user with more than 3.8 million followers.

Green’s book reviews have appeared in The New York Times Book Review and Booklist, a wonderful book review journal where he worked as a publishing assistant and production editor while writing Looking for Alaska. Green grew up in Orlando, Florida before attending Indian Springs School and then Kenyon College.

Source: http://johngreenbooks.com/bio-contact/

Genre
Fiction

Curriculum Ties
Health
Philosophy

Booktalking Ideas
Introduce the character of Miles and the setting of Culver Creek Boarding School. Read the passage when Miles meets Alaska for the first time. Then give a rating from 1-5 and tell the audience why this is my rating, and take questions.

Reading Level/Interest Age
Booklist: Grades 9-12
School Library Journal: Grade 9 and up

Challenging Issues
Death of a Loved One
Language
Sexual Content and/or Nudity

Preparing for Potential Challenges
http://jeselynsminiyacollection.blogspot.com/p/preparing-for-potential-challenges.html

Why the Item Was Chosen
Looking for Alaska was published when I was about Miles’ age, and also searching for the Great Perhaps. Instead of moving to another state alone to attend boarding school I read Green’s debut novel three times in a row. Even at fifteen, I immediately recognized this book as an important part of the young adult genre. A few years later Green came to national fame with The Fault in Our Stars and Looking for Alaska was recognized as well. Although his other works have been made into movies and shouted from the rooftops by his army of Nerdfighters, I still feel Looking for Alaska is his most introspective, heartbreaking, and riveting novel. I included this book in my collection because the name John Green will draw young adults in, but the story itself will change their lives.