Book Club and Reading Guide for "Alaska"
Hello from sunny Houston, the first stop on my tour where it is not current snowing.
Borders has made Looking for Alaska a featured book club title. You can read Michael Cart's wonderful discussion questions about the book here--and as an added bonus, you can view the paperback cover of Alaska they were going to use before it won the Printz Award.
Do you like that cover? Or do you hate it? Let us discuss this matter in comments.
EDIT: To be clear, the cover at that link will never be an actual cover of "Looking for Alaska." It was just the hypothetical cover for a while. (I like the candle better also, although I like the smoke without the candle most of all.)
posted by John Green @ Thursday, February 15, 2007
38 Comments
38 Comments:
I Like the book cover. Don't like the discussion questions...they made me think too much....like I was back in English class..it's a snow day im not supposed to think!
Hmmm. To be honest, that cover is leaning dangerously into rap-video-booty territory. I mean, Alaska is pretty objectified in the book, but no more than can be expected from a teenage boy narrator. But then later on, she's got to be reevaluated because of what happens to her. It's a little disrespectful to think of a dead person as faceless T & A. Or maybe that's the point, because she turns into just a memory.
I guess this cover doesn't do justice to the book's innards.
That style gives the impression ALASKA is a light-hearted tale in the best sense or a possible precursor to teen erotica in the worse sense. I much, much prefer the extinguished candle. Once you read the story the cover makes an even stronger impact.
I met your art director Deborah Kaplan at a conference cocktail party last October. We talked about ALASKA's cover and its evolution. It turned out fabulous.
Enjoy the warm weather!
hate it
I liked the original cover much more. This one reminds me of chick lit.
i dont like that cover at all, it makes the book look like some trashy, young adult, crap novel, while in fact it is an amazing, work or literature, that can not be looked down upon with such an obsurd cover, but im just saying that cover is totally not fitting for the book, and i am so glad they did not use it. if a book had a cover like that i would thing, boy and girl. hot sex. dumb novel and that is not fitting for a john green novel, at all.
yikes re: the cover. another decapitation! I'm glad they kept the orig. concept for the pb. (am too busy to type complete words, apparently)
I know everyone says you can't judge a book by its cover but I don't know if I would have read Alaska if that were the cover. It just looks trashy. Also, you do such a wonderful job of describing Alaska's body and to put a picture of it on the cover really cheapens all of the hard work you put in to describing it and does not allow me to imagine for myself. Good choice with the smoke.
OMG, I can't believe that cover idea exists anymore anywhere. In our family we refer to it as the 'slutty teen girl' cover. In the vein of all those 'girl torso' covers which objectify.
I copied this cover off Amazon where it resided for months before the paperback was released.
I recall that the teen book buyer for the other big chain said to your publisher two things, "if this book wins a Printz Award you're going to put a Printz sticker on THAT cover."
That cover was clearly designed by people who never read the book... or just didn't care about the book and wanted to sell covers with books attached.
I predict that Borders will be correcting this soon... This guide will become a collector's item.
The second thing the other book retailer said was a threat that will not be repeated here.
Nice to know that someone gives a sh*t about what teens see and read.
Thank heavens you won the award and they left the cover alone. First, no head. Second, strange shadows around the boobage. Third, it screams "sex romp", which is a bit beside the point.
I really do believe that the smoke on the cover of Alaska symblizes the emotion you share with Pudge and The Colonel towards the end of the book. They are certain of that she is still with them, but when they try to grasp a hold of her, by trying to find out what has happened to her, they realize she isn't even there. The smoke reminds me of the fact that something can feel so real, you can even see it, but when you try to have it, its now obtainable. The cover doesnt do the character Alaska justice, she may be seen as an object during the book, but having her shown as jsut another girl doesnt even come close to how different her spirit is.
When that cover surfaced on Amazon a while ago, I sent it around to the art dept. here, along with the original cover. The universal response was "WTF?" (art directors are not wordy people). They loved the candle and hated the tart.
the original cover with the candle looks way better.
that other cover with the girl on it makes Alaska seem just like every other Happily-Ever-After young adult book. When it's actually in a whole other league of its own.
Glad that you finally escaped the snow :]
ugh, i dont like that cover. It's looks too much like a trashy teen novel. And its not. Or, at least, if it is, I refuse to admit it. I'd agree with jesslyn, it doesn't do the book justice!
I am glad you did not use that Border's cover. It would be exceedingly difficult to get a young man to read that book and I believe it is a must read for both sexes. I love the discussion questions and printed them out for my book club. I look forward to the movie so I can start my movie club!!
PS: I do think I would like the cover if it was just smoke no candle, too.
The fact that I informed a co-worker of this cover just today and then discussed it with her at length leads me to believe that you either have bionic hearing or spies everywhere.
I like the cover, Alaska in her tight orange shirt (probably taking to Jake before she freaked out and got her self killed) Don't get me wrong I like the candle& smoke cover, but there is nothing in the book that has to do anything with a purple candle! I guess you could say the candle cover is symbolic in they way that the candle is Alaska and that is is blown out 'cause she dies and all. I like both cover but the candle one makes the book look more mature.
Well I liked the cover!!!!It was nice!!!!!Oh I'm one of the students from the book club in HOuston(Elsik High Scool)!!!!!When ur putting our video???
Well hey, at least the boob is front and center. Maybe they could have stuck the Printz sticker right on top.
John, what's it like reading discussion questions for your book? Is it weird to know that classes of high schoolers will forever be arguing about your authorial intentions?
i like the harcover cover WAY more.
this one, as in a below comment state, doesn't give the book justice. People will look at it and not get a good sense of what it's about
John, just so you know, in January, before Borders did their thing, we had our first book club of the year and picked books. I am hosting in June and I picked LOOKING FOR ALASKA as the book we read that month.
Now I don't have to think up questions on my own - yay!!!
p.s. - I've already read your book, OF COURSE, and wanted to share the wonderfulness with my friends. Do you want me to share how it goes? Do you like to know that kind of thing???
Not a fan of that cover at all. Makes it look like a trashy teenage novel! And as we all know, it is certainly NOT.
Also, my general gauge for covers is would I feel uncomfortable reading that book on the metro. Annd... I would, just a little.
When I got my Border's email this morning with their weekly updates I was SOOO happy to see LFA on there!! Congratulations!!
I am definitely NOT a fan of the current "reeeally skinny decapitated teenage girl torso" trend in YA covers, and I keep hoping that it's on its way out. I realize the argument for decapitating the cover girls is that it leaves the face up to the reader's imagination; but it still seems pretty disrespectful (and, well, icky) to reduce a girl to her boobs. Besides, why can't we trust teen readers to appreciate a more symbolic cover? Publishers seem to think that teens are incapable of figuring out that a novel is about a human being without seeing a picture on the cover.
On a side note, I find it interesting that a few of the commenters have mentioned that the cover makes the book seem "trashy"; would folks say that about a clothed male torso on the cover? Just curious.
-Jo M.
The real cover's much better--sparks fly up--and matches the dark, sexy undertones of your novel.
The questions were good for junior high or high school level. Honestly, I don't think "Alaska" would have earned so much professional praise had it adorned that CHEESE BALL cover. Thanks for posting it though.
I'm sorry, but I have to say that I don't dislike the imaginary cover. I've had a hard time getting LFA to go out at my library, because the teens (at least in my community) seem to go for the trendy looking covers. Books with little on the cover (Adrian Fogelin's The Big Nothing is another one) don't get the casual pick-up. It doesn't matter that the cover art really fits the novel - the kids aren't opening the covers to read the flaps unless the cover catches their eyes.
I don't know. I'm not saying that the imaginary cover is great - but I could see it going out more to a casual browser. Maybe Indiana teens are just oversexed...
uhh.. I am an idiot.
I don't see any [bad] unused cover of LFA, only the regular one.
am I missing something.. ?
you gotta click the link to the Border's book club reader's guide:
http://www.bordersstores.com/features/feature.jsp?file=lookingforalaska_rg
or cut and paste into your browser.
http://www.bordersstores.com/
features/feature.jsp?file=
lookingforalaska_rg
well, since blogger truncates long links, you'll probably have to cut and paste this.
To Jo: The reason I thought it looked "trashy" was because that's the type of covers other YA novels have (not naming just in case, but I'm sure you know which ones I mean) .. and having read them, they're kinda trashy. Nothing to do with the gender.
But I agree about the headless torso comment. It's overused. Also, I'm a teenager, and I thought the candle with smoke cover was very appealing.
So. different strokes, i guess
Ok, I have pasted in the url and can see the reader's guide discussion questions and the cover for the reader's guide, but it is the CANDLE!!!
yeah, that's what I meant, I only see the candle cover too with the reader discussion questions, after copying and pasting the links put up.
:|
*is deprived*
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