Module 15: Looking for Alaska

Book Summary:

In this book the main character, Miles, is looking for a whole new life. He convinces his parents to send him off to a boarding school, the same one his father went to. His roommate introduces him to a girl who he is immediately smitten with named Alaska. He and his group of friends spend much of their time pranking other students and staff of the school. Eventually, they all get very drunk, and Alaska runs off without warning. Eventually they find that she was in a fatal car accident, and they all have to deal with having let her run off and drive. In her honor, they stage the biggest prank the school has ever seen at the end of the school year.

APA Reference:

Green, J. (2007). Looking for Alaska. New York: Speak.

My Impressions:

This book is a very thought-provoking book. It is arranged in two parts, “before” and “after”.  Instead of chapters, the book is arranged is sections headed with how many days before or after, such as the beginning, which is “one-hundred thirty six days before” and the end which is “one-hundred thirty six days after”.  The book is divided almost evenly in half, although I felt like the “before” part was longer for some reason. It was exceptionally well written. The characters seemed very real, with all kinds of flaws just like real people have.  The reader can really feel the shock and sorrow when they learn of Alaska’s death. After that, the need to find out the details about what really happened consumes them, and the reader will also want to know.

The author of this book did a very good job of portraying what life can be like for high school kids. There are so many decisions they have to make, and so much peer pressure. They also often find themselves wondering if anyone else is feeling and thinking the same things they are. Their need to understand what really happened to Alaska emphasizes this. Teenagers will likely be able to relate to this book, or at least to parts of it.

There have been objections to this book, most likely because of the sexual content and references to smoking and alcohol. While that is all in this book, it does not glorify any of it. It actually makes drinking look quite bad as the reader can see the direct consequences of drinking too much several times throughout the book. The content is quite mature, though, and the book should probably not be read by children younger than high school age.

Professional Reviews:

Stevenson, D. (2005, February). [Review of the book Looking for Alaska by John Green]. Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books 58(6), p. 252. Retrieved from http://bccb.lis.illinois.edu/

Tired of a featureless life, Miles Halter decides that boarding school is the place for him to seek "the Great Perhaps," so he begins his junior year at Culver Creek in Alabama prepared for event. And that's what he gets, caught up instantly in a long-running prank war involving his roommate, Chip--always known as "the Colonel" for his military masterminding of mischief--and his close friend, the beautiful and quixotic Alaska. Soon Miles is, like many before him, besotted with Alaska, reveling in her friendship and hoping for more, despite the fact that Alaska has a long-term boyfriend. This delicious combination of the attained and the unattainable comes crashing, literally, to a halt when a drunken Alaska dies in a car accident, leaving her friends devastated. Green gives the time-tested plot of boarding-school maturation its full and considerable due, evoking the substantial appeal of the situation's hothouse intensity, heady independence, and endless possibilities. Miles is a witty narrator who manages to be credible as the overlooked kid, but he's also an articulate spokesperson for the legions of teens searching for life meaning (his taste for famous last words is a believable and entertaining quirk), and the Colonel's smarts, clannish loyalties, and relentlessly methodological approach to problems make him a true original. Alaska is sufficiently shadowed from the start that her fate isn't really surprising, but it's nonetheless heartbreaking and dramatically effective in its impact on those left behind, who compulsively try to piece together their friend's final actions (was it an impulsive suicide?) as they bring their questions about life's meaning to bear on an all-too-personal level. There's a certain recursive fitness here, since this is exactly the kind of book that makes kids like Miles certain that boarding school will bring them their destiny, but perceptive readers may also realize that their own lives await the discovery of meaning even as they vicariously experience Miles' quest.

Lewis, J. (2005). [Review of the book Looking for Alaska by John Green]. School Library Journal 51(2), p. 136. Retrieved from http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/

Gr 9 Up-Sixteen-year-old Miles Halter's adolescence has been one long nonevent-no challenge, no girls, no mischief, and no real friends. Seeking what Rabelais called the "Great Perhaps," he leaves Florida for a boarding school in Birmingham, AL. His roommate, Chip, is a dirt-poor genius scholarship student with a Napoleon complex who lives to one-up the school's rich preppies. Chip's best friend is Alaska Young, with whom Miles and every other male in her orbit falls instantly in love. She is literate, articulate, and beautiful, and she exhibits a reckless combination of adventurous and self-destructive behavior. She and Chip teach Miles to drink, smoke, and plot elaborate pranks. Alaska's story unfolds in all-night bull sessions, and the depth of her unhappiness becomes obvious. Green's dialogue is crisp, especially between Miles and Chip. His descriptions and Miles's inner monologues can be philosophically dense, but are well within the comprehension of sensitive teen readers. The chapters of the novel are headed by a number of days "before" and "after" what readers surmise is Alaska's suicide. These placeholders sustain the mood of possibility and foreboding, and the story moves methodically to its ambiguous climax. The language and sexual situations are aptly and realistically drawn, but sophisticated in nature. Miles's narration is alive with sweet, self-deprecating humor, and his obvious struggle to tell the story truthfully adds to his believability. Like Phineas in John Knowles's A Separate Peace (S & S, 1960), Green draws Alaska so lovingly, in self-loathing darkness as well as energetic light, that readers mourn her loss along with her friends.
Johanna Lewis, New York Public Library

Library Uses:

For libraries that do a display on Banned Books week, this would be an excellent book to include. While it would make an excellent choice to promote the dangers of alcohol, it probably should not be required reading in schools or a book club choice simply because of all of the objectionable material. Because of the objections to it, I think that the library choices are more limited than with other books.