Looking for Alaska
- 304
- Pages
- about 6 h
- Reading time
- Michael L. Printz Award
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Our view
On the surface a school story of a boy drawn to a girl he cannot figure out, underneath a novel about friendship, loss and how the young cope with both. Its best quality is that Alaska herself is never fully explained. Readers divide sharply: some find lines that stay with them, others find the characters hard to like and the central metaphor forced. Best read by teenagers, or by adults who remember being one.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
Looking for Alaska is a 2005 young adult novel by American author John Green. Based on his time at the private Indian Springs School, Green wrote the novel in order to create meaningful young adult fiction. While he drew from people and events in his life, the novel is fictional.
Where the score comes from
The sources average 7.6 across 1,822 ratings. With that many, the reader vote carries 92% of the weight and the score stays at 7.7 — the Young adult average of 7.8 barely moves it.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 8.0 | 128 | 7% |
| Google Books | 9.0 | 5 | 0% |
| Hardcover | 7.6 | 1.7K | 93% |
Frequently asked
What age is Looking for Alaska for?
Looking for Alaska sits on the Young adult shelf in the sources we use, which by convention means roughly ages 13 and up. This is a guide from the book’s category, not a publisher’s age rating. It has 304 pages — shorter than 88% of the ranked books in Young adult.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
The same shelf — Young adult — and a score of 7.7, the closest to this book.
