Looking for Alaska (2005)

Before. Miles “Pudge” Halter is done with his safe life at home. His whole life has been one big non-event, and his obsession with famous last words has only made him crave “the Great Perhaps” even more (Francois Rabelais, poet). He heads off to the sometimes crazy and anything-but-boring world of Culver Creek Boarding School, and his life becomes the opposite of safe. Because down the hall is Alaska Young. The gorgeous, clever, funny, sexy, self-destructive, screwed up, and utterly fascinating Alaska Young. She is an event unto herself. She pulls Pudge into her world, launches him into the Great Perhaps, and steals his heart. Then. . . . After. *Nothing is ever the same.*

Fiction Boarding schools Death Grief Interpersonal relations Traffic accidents Young adult fiction Schools Juvenile Fiction Death, Grief, Bereavement Social Themes Private schools

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Character

Contemporary, intimate, overwhelming and character-led.

contemporarynostalgic
intimateepic
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character-ledplot-driven
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About the book

Author: John Green, John Green
First published: July 3, 2006
Pages: 288
Publisher: HARPER COLL CHILDREN, Penguin Publishing Group, HarperCollins Publishers
Editions: 69
Language: German, Italian, Polish, French
ISBN: 9781484484708

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First sentence

“THE WEEK BEFORE I left my family and Florida and the rest of my minor life to go to boarding school in Alabama, my mother insisted on throwing me a going-away party.”

About John Green · 1977

John Green's first novel, Looking for Alaska, won the 2006 Michael L. Printz Award presented by the American Library Association. His second novel, An Abundance of Katherines, was a 2007 Michael L. Printz Award Honor Book and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. His next novel, Paper Towns, is a New York Times bestseller and won the Edgar Allen Poe Award for Best YA Mystery. Starting in 2007, John and his brother Hank were the hosts of a popular internet blog, "Brotherhood 2.0," (aka [vlogbrothers](https://www.youtube.com/@vlogbrothers)) where they discussed their lives, books and current events every day for a year except for weekends and holidays.