Looking for Alaska

John Green
Puffin (2006)
ISBN 9780142402511
Reviewed by Tara Hammack (age 16) for Reader Views (6/07)


“Looking for Alaska” is just a great book. I loved it because the main character Miles Cavalry reminded me of the way I was. He was a loner in public school, but when he went to a boarding school in Alabama, he found the friends he had been missing out on. His friends call him Pudge because he’s skinny and ironic. His friends consist of Chip, or The Colonel, Alaska, and Takumi. They are a very smart group of friends, but they’re still teenagers, so they do things like smoke cigarettes, drink, and prank people. In that school there are two groups -- the Weekday Warriors who are the rich people, and the regular boarders, like Pudge’s friends.

Pudge is in love with Alaska; so are the colonel and Takumi. But Alaska has a boyfriend Jake, and she is in love with him, and wouldn’t do anything to hurt that. Alaska is a person I would love to be -- not because she could get any guy, but that she is very out there and she really deep. She talks about “finding the labyrinth” which caused me to think.  I love to think about things like that. Alaska also likes to fix people up together so she fixed Pudge up with a Weekday Warrior Lara and they’re both shy and inexperienced.  I loved reading about them.  On his first date with Lara, he puked on her, but it did get a little less weird. The Weekday Warriors flooded Alaska’s room and she has this collection of books that almost all of them were ruined.  Normally they don’t go and tell the Eagle or Mr. Starnes, the dean of the students, because that’s not how they do things -- they find a way to pay them back.

Well, “Looking for Alaska” will make you laugh, get angry, uncomfortable, and sadly cry. I get way into books like these because you have no idea what’s going to happen next and I love it. Well this book was awesomely written, organized, and easy to understand, so I would recommend this book to 11-years and up. Oh, and this story has one of the best endings I have ever read.

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