Looking for Alaska by John Green

After The Hunger Games, I thought that there was no other book out there that could get my class as excited about coming in my room at the end of the day for read aloud time. The book Looking for Alaska by John Green proved me wrong! The unique set up of recounting the lives of the main characters, Pudge, The Colonel and Alaska, as defined by 'Before' and 'After' Alaska disappears leaves readers curious about what will happen on that fateful day from page one.

Looking for Alaska begins with our narrator, Pudge, leaving his typical teenage life with his parents to explore the "great perhaps" at boarding school. When he mets the Colonel and Alaska his first day on campus, his life is forever changed. He finally has close friends that he can count on and often gets into mischief with. They spend their days in class, studying/doing homework, pulling pranks and often getting into the kind of trouble teenagers are known for. Little did they know that the days 'After' would be drastically different than the 'Before' and that Alaska's disappearance would change their lives forever. John Green is a master at making the reader want to keep turning page after page until they finally resolve the storyline. The phrase page-turner has never been so appropriate.

This 256 page book is recommended for young adults. It has won multiple awards including Winner of the Michael L. Printz Award, an ALA Best Book for Young Adults, An ALA Quick Pick, A Los Angeles Times 2005 Book Prize Finalist, A New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age, A 2005 Booklist Editor's Choice and a 2005 School Library Journal Best Book of the Year. Other books by John Green include An Abundance of Katherines, Paper Town and the soon to be released The Fault in our Stars.

Kirkus Reviews says "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." I completely agree with KLIATT's assessment that "The spirit of Holden Caulfield lives on." Anyone who has read The Catcher and the Rye and enjoyed JD Salinger's exquisitely told story of teenage angst amid the boarding school lifestyle will see the similarities within the innermost thoughts of Pudge and Holden. As Pudge first arrives at Culver Creek Boarding school his thoughts reflect these similarities, I'd never been born again with the baptism and weeping and all that, but it couldn't feel much better than being born again as a guy with no known past. Pudge enters boarding school as a nobody from any old public school in Florida and finds himself on the campus of Culver Creek, maturing into the man his previous life never allowed him to be. What did happen on the day Alaska disappeared? Only those adventurous enough to step inside John Green's world will find out.

Recommended by Ms. Steffen