Paper Towns

Paper Towns by John Green
320 pages
Publisher:  Dutton Books (2008)
ISBN:0525478183
Reading Level/Lexile:  9th grade and up/950L
Genre:   Mystery

Annotation/Teaser:  Quentin has always loved Margo Roth Spiegelman from a distance.  Until one night, Margo opens his bedroom window and slips through.  She leads him on an adventure and then disappears leaving clues behind that only Quentin can solve.

Plot Summary:  When they were children, Quentin and his childhood friend and next door neighbor, Margo, find a dead body in the park at the base of a big tree.  This event means more to both of them than either of them even realize.  As they have grown up they have also grown apart.  Quentin still thinks about Margo and is secretly in love with her but Margo, being the most popular girl in school, doesn't appear to feel the same way about Quentin. One night weeks before they are supposed to graduate from high school, Margo shows up at Quentin's window and ask for help carrying out revenge pranks.  Quentin takes his mom's van and they go on an all night adventure carrying out the different pranks that Margo has planned out.  But the next day when Margo doesn't show up for school. Quentin goes on a mission to follow the clues that he thinks Margo left for him to find out where she could be.  Will Quentin solve the mystery before it is too late?

About The Author:  John Green  
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:  Paper Towns is an interesting and thought provoking novel full of metaphors.    The most obvious and largest metaphor in the book is the idea of paper towns which is also the title.  The night that Margo and Q go on their adventure, she takes him to the tall Sun Trust building in downtown Orlando.  She talks about the paper towns as they look over the city. While Q doesn't quite understand the idea of paper towns that night, he begins to understand as the story progresses.  Margo tells Q at the end of the book that paper towns are not necessarily the towns or the people but she is talking about herself.  She considers herself a paper girl. She is fake and empty and going through the motions to try to live up to everyone's expectations and visions of her as the most popular girl in school.  It is all just a facade.  I love this metaphor because everyone, adults and teens, can relate to this idea of being someone you imagine instead of being the real you. 
There are 3 other metaphors in the book that also stand out.  They are the strings, the grass, and the vessel.  The strings are Margo's view of life, the grass is Walt Whitman's view of of life, and the vessel is Quentin's view of life.  The strings represent what is inside us that hold us together and keep us sane.  We see that Margo's strings may be breaking the night she climbs through Q's window and then disappears.  The grass is a representation of the way humans are connected  and share the same root system.  The vessel that Q describes is a cracked vessel and he says, "When did we see each other face to face?  Not until you saw into my cracks and I saw into yours.  Before that we were just looking at ideas of each other, like looking at your window shade but never seeing inside.  But once the vessel cracks, the light can get in.  The light can get out."  I love this quote because I believe it sums up the whole story.  We don't really know each other we just know the "ideas" of each of other and we only see what we want to see. 

Curriculum Ties:  English, Language Arts

Book Talk Ideas:  Quentin and Margo go on an all night adventure but what happens when Margo disappers?  Will Quentin be able to follow all her clues and find her before it is too late?

Controversial Issues:  Suicide, death, runaways

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. 

Why I Chose This Book?  I chose this book because I think it gives the "nerds" a voice.  It is appropriate for both boys and girls and will appeal to any age.  It is a great mystery that will keep the reader interested.