Book Vs. TV Show: Looking For Alaska | The Curious Reader

Adaptation ScoreThe adaptation score is a scale used to measure the accuracy of the book’s adaptation into a movie. It is not a score which judges how good the book or movie is: 7/10

In John Green’s novel Looking For Alaska, there is a scene where teenage protagonist Miles shows up at his best friend Alaska’s dorm room with his girlfriend Lara because they both know nothing about blowjobs. Alaska demonstrates with a tube of toothpaste “in detail”, making Miles wish — “Never have I so wanted to be Crest Complete”. However, in Hulu’s miniseries adaptation of the book, Alaska follows this up by telling Miles to go bring a peach from the cafeteria so she can teach him how to return the favour.

This, to me, is illustrative of the differences between the series and the book.

The story of a young boy who leaves his cosy, suburban upbringing to seek an extraordinary life at Culver Creek Preparatory High School, Looking For Alaska was first published in 2005. It has since won Green a Printz Award, tremendous fandom across the internet and a ban from being taught at several school districts in the USA for its controversial content (read: smoking, drinking and sex). It was the first of his books to be optioned but its adaptation was shelved and resuscitated in several forms over the years. During this time, Green went on to publish four novels and has been a producer on two of their adaptations.

I bring up these timelines so I can offer you a bit of a disclaimer before diving in. I was once a massive Green fan (or Nerdfighter, as we were once called). I have been gifted a birthday cake with the words ‘Okay? Hazel Grace’ and am now married to a person who first asked me out using the famous ‘drizzle/hurricane’ line from this very book. Green resurrected my love for reading during a very dark time but over the years, it also became difficult to ignore the feminist critique of his work. So, I jumped into the series prepared to be very critical of it.