YA/Romance/Banned Book Review

YA/Romance/Banned Book Review
Looking for Alaska, by John Green
Renee Chaffin

Before: Miles "Pudge" is a fourteen-year-old Floridian who is tired of his traditional life and school. He decides to enroll in his father's Alma Mater, Culver Creek Boarding School in Alabama, which turns out to be anything-but-boring. Upon arrival, Pudge meets new friends and one in particular who will change his life. The intelligent, enticing, alluring, self-destructive seductress Alaska Young lives down the hall and although unavailable, makes Pudge fall in love with her and steals his heart.

After: No spoilers here. Read and find out how Alaska changes Pudge's life and the lives of their circle of friends.

Full of "firsts" for Pudge, I can see how this book pushes boundaries and perhaps the buttons of parents and school boards. The book is a classic coming of age; full of smoking, drinking, sexual encounters, cussing, and pushing the limits-- sometimes too far.

This book was recommended to me by an eighth grader at my school. It is her all-time favorite book. At first I wasn't sold, but as I continued, I was swept into the lives of Pudge, Takumi, the Colonel, and of course the mesmerizing Alaska. Their lives at boarding school are full of shenanigans, prank pulling, and brotherly love between the roommates in the dorms. The budding romances, firsts, and risk-taking were alluring and despite their rule-bending, all of the characters love to read, study hard, and are ambitious and academic. Although I didn't attend boarding school and I don't personally identify with any of the characters, it was a page-turner and I couldn't put it down. I recommend this to students in seventh grade and up who are comfortable reading about the aforementioned topics that could be considered "rated R." With a male narrator and a strong female as the secondary character, this book could appeal to both male and female students. I would ask my students to consider the following:

Discuss the book’s unusual structure. Why do you suppose Green chose this strategy for telling his story? How else might he have structured the same material?
 

Miles tells the story in his own first-person voice. How might the book differ if it had been told in Alaska’s voice or the Colonel’s? Or in the voice of an omniscient narrator?
 

The Colonel says “Everybody’s got a talent.” Do you?
 

Miles’s teacher Dr. Hyde tells him to “be present.” What does this mean?
 

John Green worked for a time as a chaplain in a children’s hospital. How do you think that influenced the writing of Looking For Alaska?
 

What do you think “The Great Perhaps” means?
 

And how about Bolivar’s “labyrinth?”