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Preservice teacher Jayme K. Barkdoll interviews John Green, author of the Michael L. Printz Award-winning young adult novel Looking for Alaska. Green recalls his experience as a young adult and shares his ideas about reading and writing young adult literature.
As a preservice teacher, I (Jayrne) find daunting the thought of being responsible for increasing the amount of reading that students complete. I have already heard the common excuses that students recite when asked about their (non)reading habits: "it's boring," "it's stupid," or "I just don't get it," with "it" referring to any number of individual titles. These reasons for not reading make their low literacy levels that much more disturbing.
Teachers face the struggle of finding literature that will connect with students' interests, encourage critical reading, and provide opportunities for literary investigation. This struggle is, at times, more difficult than expected, but with an awareness of students' backgrounds and interests, the right authors and novels, the appropriate classroom activities and discussions, and even a little "controversial" text, the world of literature may indeed become a lively, interesting learning place for many more adolescent readers and their teachers, too.
Enter John Green and his 2006 Michael L. Printz Award-winning young adult novel Looking for Alaska, a gloriously modern coming-of-age story about Miles Halter, a teenage boy trying to find his identity and his path in life through attending an Alabama boarding school. With each page Green builds more than simply a surface-level coming-ofage novel; he envelops his readers with a vivid collection of magnetic characters, beautiful settings, intriguing facts, and powerful dilemmas that provide readers with an authentic and unique window into the lives of teenagers struggling to make sense of themselves and the world around them. Green, an Alabama boarding school alum himself, proves his undeniable talents by providing us with a book that reads like reality and will challenge the thoughts of every reader. Green's characters are real teens who learn, grow, think, and change in the authentic atmosphere of a vice-filled boarding school that lends itself to underage drinking, premarital sex, and many forms of traditional teenage mischief. Looking for Alaska has its fair share of challengeable content. However, unabashed realism is what propels Green's works, particularly Looking for Alaska, far...