Experiencing death as a teenager....

Looking for Alaska by John Green tells the story of teenage Miles at a new boarding school he has chosen for himself in his search for "the Great Perhaps," as Rabelais put it. In his search for this mysterious grand future, he connects with roommate Chip, aka "the Colonel," and Alaska, a dangerous beauty that never wants to quite reveal her whole hand. This trio, along with their friends Takumi and Lara, form a sort of misfit band, smoking, drinking, and causing trouble where they can. At the climax of the story, Alaska leaves in the middle of the night after drinking heavily, crying and yelling about how sorry she is.
**Spoiler alert!**
Each chapter of the book is labeled "___ days before" or "___ days after," clearly marking the event that changed the development of every character in the story: Alaska's tragic and mysterious death that night. The rest of the novel honestly portrays the teenage attempts at grappling with death.

This book was beautifully written, and deals with a massive subject is a very creative way. When teens lose a peer, it is an entirely different experience and creates a new sense of community; they need to communicate with each other to realize that everyone else is just as confused and hopeless as they are, and that's okay. There were a lot of beautiful themes to this book, but I think my favorite was ambiguity and the acceptance thereof. From the very beginning, Miles leaves home looking for "the Great Perhaps." Considering the large amount of Buddhist philosophy later in the book, there was an obvious choice being made by choosing such an open-ended term to describe the future. This word choice sets up the entire central theme of ambiguity in a way that makes this novel undeniably YA--Miles must leave the safety of his childhood home to search out for himself the possibility of possibility, and find comfort in the ambiguity of adulthood. In one of their first conversations, Alaska poses to Miles a question about Simon Bolivar's last words--"How will I get out of this labyrinth?" Miles ponders the meaning of the labyrinth for the remainder of the novel, finally learning to accept that the labyrinth is living and dying and suffering and surviving, and we escape it with faith in the Great Perhaps. As John Green himself put it, "I was born into Bolivar’s labyrinth, and so I must believe in the hope of Rabelais’ Great Perhaps."
I would undoubtedly recommend this book to anyone with the time to read it thoroughly, and willing to spend the money on a copy to keep. There are passages in this book that I'm sure I will keep for years.

Recommended grade level: 10-12
Appropriateness: sexual content, drug use, language; has been challenged in schools, most likely making it more appropriate for an extracurricular read