Looking For Alaska (Hardcover)
Description
Miles "Pudge" Halter is abandoning his safe-okay, boring-life. Fascinated by the last words of famous people, Pudge leaves for boarding school to seek what a dying Rabelais called the "Great Perhaps."
Pudge becomes encircled by friends whose lives are everything but safe and boring. Their nucleus is razor-sharp, sexy, and self-destructive Alaska, who has perfected the arts of pranking and evading school rules. Pudge falls impossibly in love. When tragedy strikes the close-knit group, it is only in coming face-to-face with death that Pudge discovers the value of living and loving unconditionally.
John Green's stunning debut marks the arrival of a stand-out new voice in young adult fiction.
About the Author
John Green is the author of Looking for Alaska and An Abundance of Katherines. He lives in New York City.
Praise for Looking For Alaska…
"Miles’s narration is alive with sweet, self-deprecating humor, and his obvious struggle to tell the story truthfully adds to his believability. Like Phineas in John Knowles’s A Separate Peace, Green draws Alaska so lovingly, in self-loathing darkness as well as energetic light, that readers mourn her loss along with her friends." School Library Journal, starred review
"...Miles is a witty narrator who manages to be credible as the overlooked kid, but he''s also an articulate spokesperson for the legions of teen searching for life meaning (his taste for famous last words is a believable and entertaining quirk), and the Colonel''s smarts, clannish loyalties, and relentlessly methodological approach to problems make him a true original....There''s a certain recursive fitness here, since this is exactly the kind of book that makes kids like Miles certain that boarding school will bring them their destiny, but perceptive readers may also realize that their own lives await the discovery of meaning even as they vicariously experience Miles'' quest."Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books, starred review
"Readers will only hope that this is not the last word from this promising new author."Publishers Weekly
"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." Kirkus Reviews, starred review
