Looking for Alaska

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**Title** **Looking for Alaska**

Author	John Green
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Young adult novel
Publisher	Dutton Books
Released	2005
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
ISBN	ISBN 0-525-47506-0

Looking for Alaska is the first young adult novel by John Green, published in March 2005 by Dutton Juvenile. It won the 2006 Michael L. Printz Award from the American Library Association.

1 Plot summary
2 Controversy
3 Comparisons and references
4 External links
5 Footnotes
6 References

[edit] Plot summary

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Sixteen-year-old Miles "Pudge" Halter has no friends at his Florida high school. He instead loses himself in biographies of writers (though not their works). He is especially interested in the last words of famous people.

Tired of his safe life, Miles asks his parents to allow him to attend Culver Creek, a boarding school in Alabama, which his father had once attended. There, for the first time in his life, he makes friends. He drinks, smokes, plays pranks, gets a girlfriend, and finally fits in. Throughout it all, he cannot get over a girl named Alaska Young. Funny yet sullen, flirtacious yet committed to her boyfriend, she becomes somewhat of an obsession for Miles.

One night, when both Miles and Alaska are drunk, they kiss. Not long after, Alaska drives off sobbing without explaining why. Fifteen minutes later, she smashes into a parked police cruiser, killing herself instantly. Miles and his friends are crushed, especially Miles, who aided her in leaving campus and did not mention that she should not be driving drunk. Miles and his friends set out to understand the circumstances of Alaska's death. Was it a suicide? Where was she headed?

[edit] Controversy

The book has been challenged for content dealing with sexually explicit situations, though it was intended for readers 14 and up. The main characters in the story are teenagers who also drink, smoke and use foul language.^[1] The appearance of what were once traditionally adult-themes has caused some to question whether or not the book should be marketed to young teens. The book has been sited as an example of an increasingly blurry difference between young-adult and adult publishing.^[2]

[edit] Comparisons and references

Green attended Indian Springs School, a boarding and day school outside of Birmingham, Alabama. During the time he was a student there, two students died under circumstances similar to Alaska's.^[3]

According to John Green himself at a book talk in Rivermont Collegiate on October 19th, 2006, he got the idea of Takumi's "fox hat" from a Filipino friend who wore a similar hat while playing pranks at Indian Springs School. From the same book talk, Green also stated that the "possessed" swan in Culver Creek came from his student life at Indian Springs School as well, where there was also a swan of similar nature on the campus.