Looking for Alaska
Green, J.
2005
New York: Penguin
Age Range: 14+
Genre: Realistic Fiction; Printz Award Winner
Rating: 4.5/5


Embarking on a boarding school journey to experience the "Great Perhaps" or something at least a little like it, Miles is completely and utterly changed by this new, frantic existence. The epitome of adolescent self-consciousness, Miles becomes a character that is not only familiar to us, but actually may be us. As circumstances reveal themselves, Miles must deal with the really big things in life, and does so with a beautiful, awkward grace.

I'll admit that Printz Award winners or honour books are pretty much sure-fire goodness for me. And this was no let-down. Intense, funny, well-written, filled with true situations and real adolescent fears, Looking for Alaska is a genuinely good book. Miles and his friends are rich characters with much unrevealed depth, and the relationships that Green creates are complicated and real and cruel and sad and ultimately beautiful.

I'll also admit that I cried. Don't tell anyone!