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Looking for Alaska: A Novelby John Green
Staff Pick
For his junior year, Miles makes the bold decision to transfer to Culver Creek boarding school. This leap of faith opens opportunities for new journeys in friendship, romance, personal philosophy, and mischief. Green's pitch-perfect narrative explores the unknown — and the unknowable — in a thoughtful, profound, and moving manner. An intelligent, intense coming-of-age story from a talented new author. Synopses & ReviewsPublisher Comments:Miles "Pudge" Halter is abandoning his safe-okay, boring-life. Fascinated by the last words of famous people, Pudge leaves for boarding school to seek what a dying Rabelais called the "Great Perhaps."
Pudge becomes encircled by friends whose lives are everything but safe and boring. Their nucleus is razor-sharp, sexy, and self-destructive Alaska, who has perfected the arts of pranking and evading school rules. Pudge falls impossibly in love. When tragedy strikes the close-knit group, it is only in coming face-to-face with death that Pudge discovers the value of living and loving unconditionally. Review:"This ambitious first novel introduces 16-year-old Miles Halter, whose hobby is memorizing famous people's last words. When he chucks his boring existence in Florida to begin this chronicle of his first year at an Alabama boarding school, he recalls the poet Rabelais on his deathbed who said, 'I go to seek a Great Perhaps.' Miles's roommate, the 'Colonel,' has an interest in drinking and elaborate pranks — pursuits shared by his best friend, Alaska, a bookworm who is also 'the hottest girl in all of human history.' Alaska has a boyfriend at Vanderbilt, but Miles falls in love with her anyway. Other than her occasional hollow, feminist diatribes, Alaska is mostly male fantasy — a curvy babe who loves sex and can drink guys under the table. Readers may pick up on clues that she is also doomed. Green replaces conventional chapter headings with a foreboding countdown — 'ninety-eight days before,' 'fifty days before' — and Alaska foreshadows her own death twice ('I may die young,' she says, 'but at least I'll die smart'). After Alaska drives drunk and plows into a police car, Miles and the Colonel puzzle over whether or not she killed herself. Theological questions from their religion class add some introspective gloss. But the novel's chief appeal lies in Miles's well-articulated lust and his initial excitement about being on his own for the first time. Readers will only hope that this is not the last word from this promising new author. Ages 14-up." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)
Review:"Green's dialogue is crisp.... The language and sexual situations are aptly and realistically drawn, but sophisticated in nature." School Library Journal, starred review
Synopsis: The award-winning, genre-defining debut from #1 bestselling author of The Fault in Our Stars
Winner of the Michael L. Printz Award Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist New York Times bestseller
First drink First prank First friend First girl Last words
Miles "Pudge" Halter is abandoning his safe-okay, boring-life. Fascinated by the last words of famous people, Pudge leaves for boarding school to seek what a dying Rabelais called the "Great Perhaps." Pudge becomes encircled by friends whose lives are everything but safe and boring. Their nucleus is razor-sharp, sexy, and self-destructive Alaska, who has perfected the arts of pranking and evading school rules. Pudge falls impossibly in love. When tragedy strikes the close-knit group, it is only in coming face-to-face with death that Pudge discovers the value of living and loving unconditionally. John Green's stunning debut marks the arrival of a stand-out new voice in young adult fiction.
Synopsis:TIME Magazines #1 Fiction Book of 2012! “The Fault in Our Stars is a love story, one of the most genuine and moving ones in recent American fiction, but its also an existential tragedy of tremendous intelligence and courage and sadness.” —Lev Grossman, TIME Magazine Despite the tumor-shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few years, Hazel has never been anything but terminal, her final chapter inscribed upon diagnosis. But when a gorgeous plot twist named Augustus Waters suddenly appears at Cancer Kid Support Group, Hazels story is about to be completely rewritten. Insightful, bold, irreverent, and raw, The Fault in Our Stars is award-winning-author John Greens most ambitious and heartbreaking work yet, brilliantly exploring the funny, thrilling, and tragic business of being alive and in love. About the AuthorJohn Green attended a boarding school in Alabama not unlike Alaska's Culver Creek. After graduating from college in 2000, he worked as a chaplain at a children's hospital. His experiences with patients and their families during intense crises solidified his desire to write for teens and inspired him to bring his comic sensibility to a candid novel about the excitement of breaking the rules and the challenge of confronting loss. John now writes for several national magazines, both print and Web-based. He is also a commentator for National Public Radio's afternoon newsmagazine, All Things Considered, and Chicago's NPR affiliate, WBEZ. This is his first novel.
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