Looking For Alaska
Special 10th Anniversary Edition
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4.2 • 12 Ratings
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
To commemorate 10 years in print, John Green’s Printz Award-winning debut novel is being reissued in hardcover with a stunning new jacket by Rodrigo Corral and 50 pages of all-new content, including:
- An introduction by John Green
- Updated backmatter and extensive Q&A with John Green
- Deleted scenes from the original manuscript
Winner of the 2006 Michael L. Printz Award
Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist, 2005
Top Ten, NPR’s 100 Best-Ever Teen Novels
Miles Halter is fascinated by famous last words—and tired of his safe life at home. He leaves for boarding school to seek what the dying poet Francois Rabelais called “The Great Perhaps.” Much awaits Miles at Culver Creek, including Alaska Young, who will pull Miles inter her labyrinth and catapult him into the Great Perhaps.
Looking for Alaska brilliantly chronicles the indelible impact one life can have on another. Winner of multiple awards including the Printz Medal, this stunning debut marked #1 bestselling author John Green’s arrival as a groundbreaking new voice in contemporary fiction.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This ambitious first novel introduces 16-year-old Miles Halter, whose hobby is memorizing famous people's last words. When he chucks his boring existence in Florida to begin this chronicle of his first year at an Alabama boarding school, he recalls the poet Rabelais on his deathbed who said, "I go to seek a Great Perhaps." Miles's roommate, the "Colonel," has an interest in drinking and elaborate pranks pursuits shared by his best friend, Alaska, a bookworm who is also "the hottest girl in all of human history." Alaska has a boyfriend at Vanderbilt, but Miles falls in love with her anyway. Other than her occasional hollow, feminist diatribes, Alaska is mostly male fantasy a curvy babe who loves sex and can drink guys under the table. Readers may pick up on clues that she is also doomed. Green replaces conventional chapter headings with a foreboding countdown "ninety-eight days before," "fifty days before" and Alaska foreshadows her own death twice ("I may die young," she says, "but at least I'll die smart"). After Alaska drives drunk and plows into a police car, Miles and the Colonel puzzle over whether or not she killed herself. Theological questions from their religion class add some introspective gloss. But the novel's chief appeal lies in Miles's well-articulated lust and his initial excitement about being on his own for the first time. Readers will only hope that this is not the last word from this promising new author. Ages 14-up.
