John Green--The Next Big Thing in YA Lit

So my considered (dare I say "expert") opinion is that John Green is the next big thing in young adult lit.  And seriously, I'm making a career out of reading YA lit.;  So here's the break down:

A couple of weeks ago, I read Green's Looking for Alaska.  This novel was published in 2005, and many critics have, apparently, compared it to Catcher in the Rye, which I think is highly overrated.  But maybe that's just me.  So Looking for Alaska was not wonderful, didn't change my life, but it was very good.  And I read a lot of YA lit, and most of it is crap.  I've been reading some of the Gossip Girl series, and seriously, those are so very vapid that 48 hours later, I can't even remember what the books were about.  So to find contemporary YA novels that are actually meaningful is always exciting and refreshing.  So basically the novel follows a nerdy protagonist Miles (oh, he's obsessed with "last words" that is, what people say on their deathbeds) as he goes away to boarding school.  He soon meets Alaska, with whom he promptly falls hopelessly in love.  Alaska is far too cool for our protagonist, but he becomes friends with her.  And I supppose that the novel is about Miles's attempt to really understand Alaska, but it becomes his attempt to find himself.  And maybe what he finds is, in part, that other people are unknowable.  I like Miles, as a character, and maybe that's just because, as some of you know, I just really tend to like nerdy men.  Miles feels familiar and irresistable.  A librarian colleague of mine says that the book glorifies underage drinking and sex and such.  I would say it's not so much a glorification as an authentic representation of teenage behavior.  And that's certainly not to say that all teens behave like Miles (or more accurately, Miles's friends), nor am I saying that it's acceptable behavior.  It just is.

Green's second novel is titled An Abundance of Katherines.  It is high on my reading list, along with The Old Curiosity Shop.  That seems like an odd paring.

Yesterday, I read Green's Paper Towns, his latest work.  I have to say that although I enjoyed it and appreciated it, it felt a lot like Looking for Alaska.  Here we have another nerdy teenage protagonist, Quintin, or Q.  He's hopelessly in love with Margo, the too-cool chick next door.  Like Alaska, this young woman is unobtainable but also incredibly troubled.  And Q. feels the need to save her, in a very literal sense.  In his quest to save Margo, Q. grapples with the problem of our inability to really understand or even know another person.

I say that Paper Towns and Looking for Alaska are alike, and they are.  Maybe that shouldn't detract from our ultimate enjoyment of these novels.  Green's protagonists are lovable, nerdy teenagers, on the cusp of adulthood, and they are dealing with questions that certainly seem universal.  And while they may not find the answers they hope for, the novels move toward finding meaning in our relationship with the world around us.  This seems to me to be an essentially optimistic way of looking at life and and young adulthood.  In the world dominated by Gossip Girl and the Princess Diaries, I'll take Green's novels any day.

A few more fun facts about John Green and his work:  Apparently the rights to all three novels have been purchased by movie studios, and Green is currently writing a screen play of Paper Towns.  Green can be seen weekly on YouTube, where he and his brother, post vlogs directed towards the "nerdfighters," their loyal followers.  Green also owns Willie, who is quite possibly the fourth cutest dog in the world, after my Bostons, of course.