Looking+for+Alaska

**Looking for Alaska** //by John Green//

 * Description:** In a stunning debut novel, Miles "Pudge" Halter befriends some fellow boarding school students whose lives are everything but boring. Pudge falls in love with Alaska, the razor-sharp and self-destructive nucleus. But when tragedy strikes, Pudge discovers the value of loving unconditionally.

//Source: Borders.com//

“Alive with sweet, self-deprecating humor. . . . Like Phineas in John Knowles’s A Separate Peace, Green draws Alaska. . . lovingly, in self-loathing darkness as well as energetic light.”//—School Library Journal//
 * Reviews:**

Green's dialogue is crisp, especially between Miles and Chip. His descriptions and Miles's inner monologues can be philosophically dense, but are well within the comprehension of sensitive teen readers. The chapters of the novel are headed by a number of days "before" and "after" what readers surmise is Alaska's suicide. These placeholders sustain the mood of possibility and foreboding, and the story moves methodically to its ambiguous climax. The language and sexual situations are aptly and realistically drawn, but sophisticated in nature. Miles's narration is alive with sweet, self-deprecating humor, and his obvious struggle to tell the story truthfully adds to his believability. //- Johanna Lewis, New York Public Library//

//Source: Amazon.com//