Module 10: Looking for Alaska

Summary: Miles is an ordinary and sort of invisible boy in his home town in Florida so he decides that he wants to go to the same boarding school in Alabama that his father attended to change his life.  Once he gets there he meets some unforgettable friends who change his life forever.  For the first time Miles feels love, loss, and friendship.

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

Impressions: I read The Fault in Our Stars after seeing some high school students reading it and listening to them discuss it.  Ever since reading The Fault in Our Stars I have wanted to read some more of John Green's books.  This book which I believe is his first book was also just as enticing as The Fault in Our Stars.  From the very beginning Miles draws the readers in and they feel sorry for him but at the same time they can relate to him.  There has been a time in all of our lives where we felt like Miles alone and like we really do not fit in.  For Miles escape was his solution.  The only thing was that he thought that his escape would be going to the same boarding school that his dad attend, but really his escape came in the form of friends.

Professional Review:

LOOKING FOR ALASKA

by John Green

Age Range: 14 & up

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)

Looking for Alaska. (2010, June 24). Retrieved from https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/john-green/looking-for-alaska-2/

Library Uses: Looking for Alaska has some great quotes that could be used to make posters for a high school or public library.