Looking For Alaska by John Green
• cover
bibliographic information
Green, J. (2005). Looking for alaska. New York, NY: Dutton Books.(221) $15.99
• summary of the plot
Inspired by the last words of poet, Francois Rabelais, Miles begins his search for the ‘great perhaps’. What he finds is more than he could have imagined.
• reading level
AR level: 5.8
Interest: Young adult
• review
John Green writes beautifully with descriptions of the oppressive heat of the south, “Hot enough that your clothes stuck to you like scotch tape and sweat dripped like tears form your forehead into your eyes (p. 6, Green)”. His descriptions extend to his characters, Miles is unsure about hanging out with his roommate after getting hazed by some school bullies who told him, “‘This is for the Colonel. You shouldn’t hang out with that a**hole.’ (p.25, Green).” Miles is angry with the Colonel (his roommate’s nickname) until he comes to the defense of his friend, “And if the Colonel thought that calling me his friend would make me stand by him, well, he was right. (p.28)”
Green writes real life with discomfort, mistakes, mischief and embarrassment and it all rings true. He describes Miles’ first oral sexual experience with candor and decorum.
One of the best things about Green’s characters was they were playfully intelligent; for example, Miles obsession with famous people’s dying words, Alaska quotes Edna St. Vincent Millay, ‘Night falls fast. today is in the past…’ and when Takumi rapped, ‘If my eye offends me I will pluck it out/ I got props for girls like old men got gout/oh sh*t now my rhyming got all whack/ Lara help me out and pick up the slack.” (pp.112-113)
The seemingly innocent game of best day/worst day becomes the center of Alaska’s labyrinth:
p.115-119 “‘Best day of my life was January 9, 1997. I was eight years old, and my mom and I went to the zoo on a class trip. I liked the bears. She liked the monkeys. Best day ever. End of story.’ …’The day after my mom took me to the zoo where she liked the monkeys and I liked the bears, it was a Friday. I came home from school. She gave me a hug and told me to go do my homework in my room so I could watch TV later. I went into my room, and she sat down at the kitchen table, I guess, and then she screamed, and I ran out, and she had fallen over. She was lying on the floor, holding her head and jerking. And I freaked out. I should have called 911, but I just started screaming and crying until finally she stopped jerking, and I thought she had fallen asleep and that whatever had hurt didn’t hurt anymore. So I just sat there on the floor with her until my dad got home an hour later, and he’s screaming, ‘Why didn’t you call 911?’ and trying to give her CPR, but by then she was plenty dead. Aneurysm. Worst day. I win. You drink.”
• readers’ annotation
A labyrinth is full of twists and turns and the way out in never clear. Will memorizing the atlas help, or the final words captured by history point you in the right direction? You have to choose your own direction with Looking for Alaska by John Green.
• bibliotherapeutic
I would suggest using the title for people who have gone through the death of a teen or young person. There is also many opportunities to talk about alcohol and drug use and the negative results. I’ve always pointed out to my children about alcohol is the first brain function to be impaired is judgement. I talk about how the frontal lobe is not yet fully developed in teens therefore they tend to be impulsive even before they take a drink.
This title could also be a leaping off point to talk about teens thoughts about “the great perhaps” in regards to his/her own life. What hopes and dreams does s/he have and where will s/he look for them?
• issues present
Under age Smoking
Under age drinking
pranks
A boy and girl being expelled for having sex while drunk and high
hazing
teen sexuality
drug abuse
bad sportsmanship
masturbation
porn
vulgar language
oral sex
cheating/fooling around
drunk driving
• booktalk ideas—what character/scene/plot line would you focus on? List page numbers as appropriate
The labyrinth images.
p.18-19 “He-that’s Simon Bolivar-‘was shaken by the overwhelming revelation that the headlong race between his misfortunes and his dreams was at that moment reaching the finish line. The rest was darkness.’Damn it,’ he sighed. ‘ How will I ever get out of this labyrinth!’ I knew great last words when I heard them, and I made a mental note to get a hold of a biography of this Simon Bolivar fellow. Beautiful last words, but I didn’t quite understand. ‘So what’s the labyrinth?’I asked her. … ‘That’s the mystery, isn’t it? Is the labyrinth living or dying? Which is he trying to escape-the world or the end of it?’
p. 31 “The nature of the labyrinth, I scribbled into my spiral notebook, and the way out of it.”
p.82 “She said, ‘It’s not life or death, the labyrinth.’
‘Um, okay. So what is it?’
‘Suffering,’ she said. ‘Doing wrong and having wrong things happen to you. That’s the problem. Bolivar was talking about the pain, not about the living or dying. How do you get out of the labyrinth of suffering?…Nothing’s wrong. But there’s always suffering, Pudge. Homework or malaria or having a boyfriend who lives far away when there’s a good-looking boy lying next to you. Suffering is universal. It’s the one thing Buddhists, Christians, and Muslims are all worried about.”
“You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking how you’ll escape one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present.”
After hearing how Alaska’s mother died in front of her when she was eight, Miles thinks about President William McKinley’s last words when his wife cried,’I want to go, too!’ he answered, ‘We are all going.’ p. 121 “There’s your labyrinth of suffering. We are all going. Find your way out of that maze.”
The final test question for the religious studies question was, “How will you-you personally-ever get out of this labyrinth of suffering?” p.215
The Colonel answers this way, “‘After all this time, it still seems to me like straight and fst is the only way out-but I choose the labyrinth. The labyrinth blows, but I choose it.’” p.216
Miles writes his “…way out of the labyrinth:
Before I got here, I thought for a long time that the way out of the labyrinth was to pretend that it did not exist, to build a small, self-sufficient world in a back corner of the endless maze and to pretend that I was not lost, but home. But that only led to a lonely life accompanied only by the last words of the already-dead, so I came here looking for a Great Perhaps, for real friends and a more-than-minor life. And then I screwed up and the Colonel screwed up and Takumi screwed up and she slipped through our fingers. And there’s no sugar-coating it: She deserved better friends. I still think that, sometimes, think that maybe ‘the afterlife’ is just something we made up to ease the pain of loss, to make our time in the labyrinth bearable. Maybe she was just matter, and matter gets recycled. But ultimately I do not believe that she was only matter. The rest of her must be recycled, too. I believe now that we are greater than the sum of our parts. … There is something else entirely. There is a part of her greater than the sum of her knowable parts. And that part has to go somewhere, because it cannot be destroyed. … the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail. So I know she forgives me, just as I forgive her. Thomas Edison’s last words were: ‘It’s very beautiful over there.’ I don’t know where there is, but I believe it’s somewhere, and I hope it’s beautiful.” (pp.219-221)
• genre or subject—the main theme/issue of the book
Adventure-Life Changes;
Behavior-Misc./Other;
Community Life-School;
Emotions-Misc./Other;
Family Life-Death;
Health & Wellness-Accidents/Prevention
• readalikes
An abundance of Katherines, by John Green
Let is snow: Three Holiday Romances by John Green
Paper Towns by John Green
The disreputable history of Frankie Landau-Banks: a novel by E. Lockhart
13 little blue envelopes by Maureen Johnson
Perks of being a wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
Thirteen reasons why: a novel by Jay Asher
Speak by Laurie Anderson
Nick and Norah’s infinite playlist by Rachel Cohn
Prep: a novel by Curtis Sittenfeld
- link to author’s website
http://johngreenbooks.com/
• awards won and lists appeared on
Winner, 2006 Michael L. Printz Award
Finalist, 2005 Los Angeles Times Book Prize
2006 Top 10 Best Book for Young Adults
2006 Teens’ Top 10 Award
2006 Quick Pick for Reluctant Young Adult Readers
A New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age
A Booklist Editor’s Choice Pick
Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection
Borders Original Voices Selection
• links to reviews in professional review sources
[Looking for Alaska]. (2005). Publishers Weekly, 252(6), 61.
[Looking for Alaska]. (2005). School Library Journal, 51(2), 136.
Sieruta, P. D. (2005). [Looking for Alaska]. Horn Book Magazine, 81(2), 201-202.
Stevenson, D. (2005). [Looking for Alaska]. Bulletin Of The Center For Children’s Books, 58(6), 252.
Ivry, S. (1999). Green Alaska (Book Review) (Undetermined). New York Times Book Review, 104(33), 18.
Niemi, J. (2001). Green Alaska (Book Review) (Undetermined). Women’s Review Of Books, 18(10-11), 27-28.
Carlson, J. L. (2001). Looking for Alaska (Book Review) (Undetermined). Library Journal (1976), 126(18), 124.
Taylor, G. (2001). Looking for Alaska (Book Review) (Undetermined). Booklist, 98(3), 267-268.
Hannegan, L., & Grover, S. (2008). SECONDARY. Teacher Librarian, 36(1), 45.
• why you chose it.
I enjoyed another book by this author.
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