Looking for Alaska

Green, John. (2005). Looking for Alaska. New York: Dutton Books.

Reading Level: Grade 9+

Summary:
Sixteen-year-old Miles transfers from public high school in Florida to a private boarding school in Culver Creek, Alabama. At Culver Creek, Miles meets new and interesting people who become his friends. One of these new friends is an impetuous girl named Alaska, who quickly gains Miles' admiration. When someone is killed in a car crash, Miles and his friends are left stunned. They must work through where their friend has gone, and what it means to be the ones left living.

Comments:
This book deals with many issues facing today's teens: popularity, peer pressure, oral sex, parental pressures, relationships with the opposite sex, and general angst. Parents are not around at the Culver Creek school, so the students have much more freedom that typical teens. Miles takes up smoking and drinking, gets his first girlfriend, and manages to pull off a number of dangerous pranks with his friends. I don't agree with the prevalence of smoking in the book. The characters are constantly smoking, and rarely get into trouble for it. Another thing I'm concerned about is the unhealthy food the teens seemed to love. Everything is deep fried, yet there's no phys-ed class. The fried food is mentioned numerous times in the book. Small things like this may leave lasting impressions on teens reading the book.

On a more literary note, the book was quite well written. It remains interesting throughout, though the second section (after the accident) seems longer than necessary. The characters are enjoyable, though more mature than I picture 16-year-olds to be. There is some good philosophy in the book about life after death and the meaning of life. I really think this sort of discussion is necessary today when many teens may have questions about death that religion is not answering for them. The book also contains lots of humor. I would recommend this book to teens with an appropriate maturity level.

Rating: 4/5