Book For This Week - 9/11/10

Looking For

Alaska

by


John Green

From School Library Journal

"Grade 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 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."


(I finished listening to this on audio as I peeled and cored pears for canning this morning.  This is the first young adult book I have listened to this year and it is one that I will highly recommend to any young adult 18 or above.  I would not be comfortable with my ninth grader reading it. (if I had one)due to sexual content.   Although very funny in parts and very sad in parts,  a profoundness resonates throughout the book.  As always,  click on the author's name and title to follow the links to more information.  This is one that I would like to have a hard copy of in my personal library to lift quotes from.  It deals with the suffering we all feel in life in a very comforting way.)