Looking for Alaska

**This review was created for an assignment at Texas Woman's University**

Book Review: Looking for Alaska

1. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Green, John. 2005. LOOKING FOR ALASKA. New York: Dutton Books.
ISBN: 0525475060

2. PLOT SUMMARY
Sixteen-year-old Miles Halter leaves the comfort of his Florida home and “boring” high school to attend the private school Culver Creek in Birmingham, Alabama. He is looking for adventure and the mystery of the “Great Perhaps”* that he hopes awaits him at his new school.

Miles makes friends quickly at Culver Creek. His roommate Chip “the Colonial”, and young female student Alaska become the friends her trusts most. A tragic event and loss of a close friend force Miles and his friends to deal with grief like they have never experienced in their lives. Miles and his friends begin to search for answers surrounding their friends death, and in the process learn more about life and loss then they ever realized was possible.

*Famous last words of French writer Francois Rabelais

3. CRITICAL ANALYSIS
This debut novel by John Green is one that will leave a lasting impression in the minds of readers. Green has developed very sophisticated and complex characters in this novel. Green does not shy away from bringing real and relevant topics and themes such as sex, smoking, drugs and alcohol, and suicide to readers in spite of any controversy the discussion may arouse. His style of writing is sharp and witty with dialogue that reveals the internal and emotional challenges that the characters face as they deal with the “real” pressures that related teen life.

Green writes through Miles’s narration after the loss of his friend, “… I have lost something important, and I cannot find it, and I need it. It is fear like if someone lost his glasses and went to the glasses store and they told him that the world had run out of glasses and he would just have to do without.”

The story is set at a private school in southern Alabama. The setting is important to the story because of the inclusion of the outdoor places characters frequent as a get-away place from the pressures of their school.

The relationships between the characters in the book develop and grow in many of these private areas set outdoors. Areas such as the “smoking hole” and the surrounding areas around Culver Creek provide comfort and solace for the characters. The tragic event that defines this book occurs on the I-65 interstate which is the main highway going in and out of Culver Creek.

Green writes, “And lying there, amid the tall, still grass and beneath the star-drunk sky, listening to the just-this-side-of-inaudible sound of her rhythmic breathing and the noisy silence of the bullfrogs, the grasshoppers, and the distant cars rushing endlessly on I-65.”

The plot development is defined in two parts around the central tragedy in the book, before and after. The strength and the individual growth seen in the characters in the story builds throughout, and comes to a head in the “after” section of the story. Readers will feel like they are right there experiencing the lives of the characters in this novel and they turn the pages of this book. An author's note is included at the end of the book where Green shares his intent for writing the story. He also includes references related to the literary works quoted in the book.

Green has written a well-developed and contemporary work of fiction that will engage readers and allow them to connect with the characters in this story on many different emotional levels. Readers will surely be looking to his next novel for another dose of exciting and adventurous writing.

4. REVIEW EXCERPT(S)
Publisher’s Weekly: “Readers will only hope that this is not the last word from this promising new author.”

Kirkus Reviews: “What sings and soars in this gorgeously told tale is Green's mastery of language and the sweet, rough edges of Pudge's voice. Girls will cry and boys will find love, lust, loss and longing in Alaska's vanilla-and-cigarettes scent.”

5. CONNECTIONS:
*Teachers can use this novel to talk to teens about peer-pressure as their lives relate to the characters in this book.

AWARDS:
Winner of the 2006 Michael L. Printz Award