The Fault In Our Stars

The Fault In Our Stars by John Green

318 pages

Publisher:  Dutton Books January 2012

ISBN:  9780525478812

Reading Level/Lexile:  11th grade and up/850L

Genre:  Realistic Fiction, Romance

Annotation/Teaser:  All Hazel wants is to be a normal teenager but she is dying.  Then Augustus comes along.  Will her cancer allow her the time she needs to feel normal?

Plot Summary:  After discovering she has Stage 4 cancer, Hazel shouldn't be alive but she is and wants nothing more than to be a normal teenager.  Forced by her parents to attend a Cancer Support Group she wants nothing to do with, Hazel meets Augustus.  Augustus, another cancer survivor, proves to be quite stubborn when it comes to making Hazel his friend.  Finally, Hazel introduces Gus to her favorite book, An Imperial Affliction and Gus makes it his mission to fulfill her dying wish through the Make a Wish foundation to meet her favorite author.  After taking a disappointing trip to Amsterdam to meet him, they come up empty handed.  This trip of a lifetime will change their lives forever and nothing will ever be the same. 

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About The Author:
John Green is the New York Times bestselling author of Looking for Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines, Paper Towns, and The Fault in Our Stars. He is also the coauthor, with David Levithan, of Will Grayson, Will Grayson. He was 2006 recipient of the Michael L. Printz Award, a 2009 Edgar Award winner, and has twice been a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Green’s books have been published in more than a dozen languages.
In 2007, Green and his brother Hank ceased textual communication and began to talk primarily through videoblogs posted to YouTube. The videos spawned a community of people called nerdfighters who fight for intellectualism and to decrease the overall worldwide level of suck. (Decreasing suck takes many forms: Nerdfighters have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to fight poverty in the developing world; they also planted thousands of trees around the world in May of 2010 to celebrate Hank’s 30th birthday.) Although they have long since resumed textual communication, John and Hank continue to upload two videos a week to their YouTube channel, vlogbrothers. Their videos have been viewed more than 200 million times, and their channel is one of the most popular in the history of online video. He is also an active Twitter user with more than 1.2 million followers.
Green’s book reviews have appeared in The New York Times Book Review and Booklist, a wonderful book review journal where he worked as a publishing assistant and production editor while writing Looking for Alaska. Green grew up in Orlando, Florida before attending Indian Springs School and then Kenyon College.

John Green Bio (n.d.) Retrieved from www.johngreenbooks.com

Critical Evaluation:  The Fault in Our Stars is a great book.  I love the deep, witty, intelligent teens that John Green creates in this book.  The character development in Hazel is one of the biggest developments in this book. At the beginning of the book, the reader Hazel as a girl who just stays at home and watches America's Next Top Model.  Her mom wants her to go out and make friends so she forces her to go to a cancer support group.  She appears as if she doesn't want to live her life and seize every moment but I think the real reason is that she doesn't want to hurt people.  She says, "There is only one thing in this world shittier than biting it from cancer when you're sixteen, and that's having a kid who bites it from cancer."  We see that she really is more concerned about her parents than she is about living her life and making friends.  But by the end of the book, Hazel is a different person.  She realizes it is okay for her to have a life and make friends while she still can.  While the plot develops and Hazels characters grows, the romance of Augustus and Hazel also develops.  This is something that was unexpected to me because of Hazel's bitter attitude and real life view of her cancer.  I knew she was attracted to him but didn't really think it would turn into anything.  I did like this book but I did not think the characters of Augustus and Hazel were believable.  The language and vocabulary that they use were much older to me than a teenager would use.  But I really didn't care.  They were witty and the book kept me interested and wanting more.   

One thing that I thought was brilliant was the fact that Hazel's favorite book, An Imperial Affliction by Peter Van Houten is a work of fiction inside a work of fiction.  I was impressed with the way Green wrote about An Imperial Affliction to make it sound as if it was a real work of fiction.  Upon further investigation, I was disappointed to find that the book and the author does not exist.  

Curriculum Ties:  Health, English

Book Talk Ideas: How did all the adults in Hazel's life treat her and how would that have been different if she weren't sick?

Was Gus and Hazel's relationship a big risk for them?

Controversial Issues In This Book:  Death, Sex, and Language

Defense: 

*I will keep the library's selection policy on hand and memorized with a good understanding  of the standards and policies to show that the selection meets the standards. 

*I will keep good and bad reviews (both electronic and print) and make sure they are from reliable and respected sources such as School of Library Journal, Booklist, and YALSA. I will have copies of these reviews to give away. 

*I will confirm the library's position to provide intellectual freedom as stated in the Library Bill of Rights and keep a copy of this.

*I will keep a written rationale to justify the reasons this material is included in the collection, such as educational significance and curriculum ties.

*I will be respectful and calm and practice "active listening".

*I will make sure I read the material and are very familiar with it.

* I will keep a reconsideration form on file in the event that my other strategies don't work. 

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Why I Chose This Book:  I chose this book because John Green does an awesome job at showing the reader that just because a person is sick doesn't mean that they don't think about the same things a normal teenager would think of.  Also, it depicts the realness of the sickness and death of young people.  This book was a #1 best seller on The New York Times Best Seller List for Children's Chapter Books and had raving reviews from several bestselling authors.