Module 10/Graphic Novels and Censorship Issues/August 3-August 7

Looking for Alaska by John Green

Green, J.  (2005).  Looking for Alaska.  New York:  Penguin Group.

Summary

The story follows the life of Miles, who transfers to Culver Creek Prep School to search for something more in his life.  As soon as he arrives, he is nicknamed Pudge and so that is his name for the remainder of the story.  Pudge makes fast friends with a group of boys and girls but most important to him is Alaska.  She is a mysterious girl and although she already has a boyfriend, Pudge can't help but to fall in love with her.  Much of the novel includes pranks:  pranks from Pudge's group, pranks from the Weekday Warriors, and pranks played on The Eagle, the dean of the school.  Everything comes to a head when the group plans the biggest  prank of all and they drink all night preparing for it.  However, Alaska leaves in the middle of the night and dies in a car crash.  The Eagle announces it at school the next day and Pudge is heartbroken and confused.  They never know what truly happened to Alaska and she remains the mystery she has always been.  In her honor, they pull the biggest prank the school has ever seen:  hiring a male stripper to perform at their ceremony.  

My Impression

I love anything by John Green...seriously, anything.  What I like a lot about his writing is it seems to be in layers.  Throughout the book he leaves little hints and things that tie other situations together and you don't realize it until you look back.  He also writes exactly like a teenager would speak.  I believe that is the big appeal of Green.  Also, I love that this was a mystery and there was never really any conclusion to the story.  I usually don't like this, but with a character like Alaska I felt it was very fitting out of respect for her.  

Reviews and Awards

"The Alaska of the title is a maddening, fascinating, vivid girl seen through the eyes of Pudge (Miles only to his parents), who meets Alaska at boarding school in Alabama. Pudge is a skinny (“irony” says his roommate, the Colonel, of the nickname) thoughtful kid who collects and memorizes famous people’s last words. The Colonel, Takumi, Alaska and a Romanian girl named Lara are an utterly real gaggle of young persons, full of false starts, school pranks, moments of genuine exhilaration in learning and rather too many cigarettes and cheap bottles of wine. Their engine and center is Alaska, given to moodiness and crying jags but also full of spirit and energy, owner of a roomful of books she says she’s going to spend her life reading. Her center is a woeful family tragedy, and when Alaska herself is lost, her friends find their own ways out of the labyrinth, in part by pulling a last, hilarious school prank in her name. 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. (Fiction. YA)"

(2010, June 24).  [Review of the book Looking for Alaska].  Kirkus Reviews.  Retrieved on 

      https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/john-green/looking-for-alaska-2/.

2006 Michael L. Printz Award

Booklist Editors' Choice Pick

2006 Top Ten Best Books for Young Adults

Suggestions for Use

*Have each person make up a nickname for themselves and tell why they would use that nickname

*Have students research their favorite last words of a famous person and share with the group