John Green's authorial debut and Printz-winning novel tells the story of Miles "Pudge" Halter, a high school student who leaves his home in Florida to attend Culver Creek Preparatory School, fifteen miles south of Birmingham, Alabama. Pudge goes in search of what he calls 'a Great Perhaps' - a place where he can begin to explore the deep, meaningful questions of life, and where he hopes to discover adventures of his own. Once he arrives at Culver Creek, he finds friends in two comparably intelligent and somewhat troubled fellow students: Alaska and Chip "The Colonel" Martin.
The story follows Alaska, the Colonel and Pudge as they fall in and out of love and lust, challenge authority (sometimes with wild pranks), enjoy the freedom of the outdoors in rural Alabama, discuss literature, and struggle to find healing from past hurts through their friendships with each other. Alaska cannot forgive herself for her own sense of responsibilty for her mother's death, and she engages in self-destructive behavior that eventually costs her life. Alaska's death forces Pudge and the Colonel to ask questions of why, relentlessly searching for answers to life's pain until Pudge arrives at one: the only right way out of the labyrinth of suffering is through the path of forgiveness.
Themes: friendship, suffering, forgiveness, coming of age
Concerns: underage drinking, sexual themes, questionable language, suicide
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
An Abundance of Katherines (in summary)
Green's second book, An Abundance of Katherines, is significantly lighter fare than his first. This novel tells about the adventures of recently-graduated Colin Singleton and his best friend Hassan as they take a road trip and end up in a rural town - Gutshot, Tennessee. The oft-melancholy Colin wants to get away from his hometown of Chicago after high school when he is dumped for the 19th time, by his 19th girlfriend. All 19 of said dumping-girlfriends were named Katherine.
Hassan and Colin decide to stick around for a while in Gutshot and take a job with a woman who keeps the small town in business by runing a factory that produces tampon strings. Her daughter, Lindsey Lee Wells, befriends the boys and eventually helps Colin break his Katherine-streak. But not before Colin develops a complex mathematical formula that he believes can graph the potential life of a romantic relationship between any two individuals, even predicting how long the relationship will last and which person will bring it to an end. Ultimately, the formula fails and Colin concludes that life is unpredictable - that we must each hold on to hope, and take what we can get.
Green's writing is humorous and full of trivia about everything from Archduke Ferdinand to Arabic and other foreign words to mathematical theory. Although Katherines might not work as well as LFA in the classroom, I would recommend it for self-selected personal reading for high school students.
Themes: loneliness, heartache, friendship, laughter
Concerns: language and mild sexual themes
Hassan and Colin decide to stick around for a while in Gutshot and take a job with a woman who keeps the small town in business by runing a factory that produces tampon strings. Her daughter, Lindsey Lee Wells, befriends the boys and eventually helps Colin break his Katherine-streak. But not before Colin develops a complex mathematical formula that he believes can graph the potential life of a romantic relationship between any two individuals, even predicting how long the relationship will last and which person will bring it to an end. Ultimately, the formula fails and Colin concludes that life is unpredictable - that we must each hold on to hope, and take what we can get.
Green's writing is humorous and full of trivia about everything from Archduke Ferdinand to Arabic and other foreign words to mathematical theory. Although Katherines might not work as well as LFA in the classroom, I would recommend it for self-selected personal reading for high school students.
Themes: loneliness, heartache, friendship, laughter
Concerns: language and mild sexual themes
Teaching Looking for Alaska
Looking for Alaska is filled with literary references to authors such as James Joyce, William Faulker, W.H. Auden, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Kurt Vonnegut, Robert Frost, Henrik Ibsen, Ernest Hemingway, and Chinua Achebe. Green's characters Alaska, Pudge and the Colonel are fairly standard teenagers who laugh, joke, see social relationships as their highest priority, experiment with sex and alcohol, and look for ways to bend school rules. They also delve into rich literary discourse with one another as they struggle to find deeper meaning in life. I see the marriage of these two realities as a fundamentally accurate depiction of what adolescent life is like for many people and as a welcome pathway into a contextualized study of essential literature.
After reading Looking for Alaska as a class, I might require students to choose an additional book to read from a list of titles mentioned by Green's characters. Students with matching choices would read their selected novel in literature circles. I would provide scaffolding and background information for more difficult texts, and I would monitor discussion. For each of the novels, students would discuss key themes and identify how those themes relate to LFA. As a final assignment, students could work independently to produce a series of journal entries in response to the novel, but they would write these journals in the voice of one of Green's characters. For example, how would the Colonel read A Farewell to Arms? How would he react to various events in the story? How might Alaska respond to A Doll's House? Would anything offend her? In this way, students will learn perspective-taking skills, interpretation of literature, and they will enhance their ability to compare multiple texts. What's more, I suspect the connection between a contemporary text and more classic ones will increase the likelihood that students will remember and appreciate literature even if it is far removed from their personal experience.
(Image: from York University, Canada)
Christian fiction & controversy in LFA
Looking for Alaska uses explicit language and touches on themes of underage drinking and smoking, oral sex, drunk driving and suicide. So why would John Green tag his book as Christian fiction?
Green explains in his blog that any literature, if it is to be of lasting value, must teach in some way. Even more so for YA books, he says. If good literature has a life span of 30 years, good YA lit has a life span of about 10. Besides, he argues, any author who claims to write apolitically or amorally is kidding himself.
Alaska's unabashed statement about the value of forgiveness, love and acceptance struck a chord with my own faith - a chord that was only enhanced by the novel's realistic portrayal of adolescent language and behavior.
I believe that, in spite of potential controversy, this book deserves a place on secondary school bookshelves.
Green explains in his blog that any literature, if it is to be of lasting value, must teach in some way. Even more so for YA books, he says. If good literature has a life span of 30 years, good YA lit has a life span of about 10. Besides, he argues, any author who claims to write apolitically or amorally is kidding himself.
Alaska's unabashed statement about the value of forgiveness, love and acceptance struck a chord with my own faith - a chord that was only enhanced by the novel's realistic portrayal of adolescent language and behavior.
I believe that, in spite of potential controversy, this book deserves a place on secondary school bookshelves.
Famous last words: History, religion & literature in LFA
John Green does a brilliant job of lacing his novels with references to important writers, historical figures and events. This is part of the reason why his books would work well in a HS classroom, in spite of their sometimes questionable language and themes. LFA could easily be paired with any number of works of essential literature, but even reading the novel in isolation would provoke classroom discussion about issues that extend far beyond the book itself.
Looking for Alaska makes overt references to:
The General in His Labyrinth by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
The novel makes casual reference to other authors, including Robert Frost.
The characters in LFA enroll in a religious studies course in which they discuss and reflect on the basic tenets of Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, and Judaism.
LFA could also lend itself to a study of history in literature. Miles quotes the famous last words attributed to numerous historical and political figures such as Robert E. Lee, Meriwether Lewis, Millard Filmore, Thomas Edison, Edgar Allen Poe and many more.
Looking for Alaska makes overt references to:
The General in His Labyrinth by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
The novel makes casual reference to other authors, including Robert Frost.
The characters in LFA enroll in a religious studies course in which they discuss and reflect on the basic tenets of Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, and Judaism.
LFA could also lend itself to a study of history in literature. Miles quotes the famous last words attributed to numerous historical and political figures such as Robert E. Lee, Meriwether Lewis, Millard Filmore, Thomas Edison, Edgar Allen Poe and many more.
Love your crooked neighbor :: with your crooked heart
In Looking for Alaska, Alaska quotes Auden's poem "As I Walked Out One Evening." Her reference to Auden highlights the novel's theme of forgivenes, and the poem would work well as a supplementary text for classroom discussion.
As I Walked Out One Evening
by W.H. Auden
As I walked out one evening,
Walking down Bristol Street,
The crowds upon the pavement
Were fields of harvest wheat.
And down by the brimming river
I heard a lover sing
Under an arch of the railway:
"Love has no ending."
"I'll love you, dear, I'll love you
Till China and Afica meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street."
"I'll love you till the ocean
Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
Like geese about the sky."
"The years shall run like rabbits,
For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages,
And the first love of the world."
But all the clocks in the city
Began to whirr and chime:
"O let not Time deceive you
You cannot conquer Time."
"In the burrows of the Nightmare
Where Justice naked is,
Time watches from the shadow
And coughs when you would kiss."
"In headaches and in worry
Vaguely life leaks away,
And time will have his fancy
To-morrow or to-day."
"Into many a green valley
Drifts the appalling snow
Time breaks the threaded dances
And the diver's brilliant bow."
"O plunge your hands in water
Plunge them up to the wrist;
Stare, stare in the basin
And wonder what you've missed."
"The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the tea-cup opens
A lane to the land of the dead."
"Where the beggars raffle the banknotes
And the Giant is enchanting to Jack,
And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer
And Jill goes down on her back."
"O look, look in the mirror,
O look in your distress;
Life remains a blessing
Although you cannot bless."
"O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbor
With your crooked heart."
It was late, late in the evening
The lovers they were gone;
The clocks had ceased their chiming,
And the deep river ran on.
As I Walked Out One Evening
by W.H. Auden
As I walked out one evening,
Walking down Bristol Street,
The crowds upon the pavement
Were fields of harvest wheat.
And down by the brimming river
I heard a lover sing
Under an arch of the railway:
"Love has no ending."
"I'll love you, dear, I'll love you
Till China and Afica meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street."
"I'll love you till the ocean
Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
Like geese about the sky."
"The years shall run like rabbits,
For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages,
And the first love of the world."
But all the clocks in the city
Began to whirr and chime:
"O let not Time deceive you
You cannot conquer Time."
"In the burrows of the Nightmare
Where Justice naked is,
Time watches from the shadow
And coughs when you would kiss."
"In headaches and in worry
Vaguely life leaks away,
And time will have his fancy
To-morrow or to-day."
"Into many a green valley
Drifts the appalling snow
Time breaks the threaded dances
And the diver's brilliant bow."
"O plunge your hands in water
Plunge them up to the wrist;
Stare, stare in the basin
And wonder what you've missed."
"The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the tea-cup opens
A lane to the land of the dead."
"Where the beggars raffle the banknotes
And the Giant is enchanting to Jack,
And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer
And Jill goes down on her back."
"O look, look in the mirror,
O look in your distress;
Life remains a blessing
Although you cannot bless."
"O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbor
With your crooked heart."
It was late, late in the evening
The lovers they were gone;
The clocks had ceased their chiming,
And the deep river ran on.
Formulas, anagrams and footnotes: Using 'Katherines' in the classroom
An Abundance of Katherines does not have an overhwelmingly moving theme or plot, but it is an enjoyable read.
A couple of interesting notes about how Katherines could be used in the classroom:
Reading for math class?
Colin develops and explains a verifiable mathematical formula that students could test with any number of variables. Katherines might be a good choice for math teachers looking to liven up their curriculum.
Anagrams
Katherines is full of them. This could be a fun way to get kids to play with words, discovering the flexibility of language instead of constantly focusing on its conventions and constrictions.
Footnotes
John Green is a self-professed trivia Geek; An Abundance of Katherines proves him right. Green includes a number of witty footnotes that students can either ignore or embrace. If they embrace them, they will not only get in the habit of looking to footnotes for information, but they might also become the next champs on High School Jeopardy.
A couple of interesting notes about how Katherines could be used in the classroom:
Reading for math class?
Colin develops and explains a verifiable mathematical formula that students could test with any number of variables. Katherines might be a good choice for math teachers looking to liven up their curriculum.
Anagrams
Katherines is full of them. This could be a fun way to get kids to play with words, discovering the flexibility of language instead of constantly focusing on its conventions and constrictions.
Footnotes
John Green is a self-professed trivia Geek; An Abundance of Katherines proves him right. Green includes a number of witty footnotes that students can either ignore or embrace. If they embrace them, they will not only get in the habit of looking to footnotes for information, but they might also become the next champs on High School Jeopardy.
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