The Fault in Our Stars

The Fault in Our Stars

By John Green

Dutton Books, 2012. 318 pages. Fiction/romance.

ISBN: 9780525478812

Reading/Interest Level: Ages 14+

Curriculum ties: Health, cancer

Booktalk Ideas: Bucket list!: Ask students to think about what they would want to do if they knew they didn’t have long to live. Then explain what was so important to Hazel, and how she almost didn’t get to go to Amsterdam because of Disney World.

Challenge Issues: Language, sex, alcohol use

Challenge Response: First Defense File

Reader’s Annotation:

As a cancer survivor, Hazel doesn’t know how much time she has left and doesn’t see the point to her life. That is, until she meets and falls for Augustus Waters, a fellow cancer survivor.

Plot Summary:

Hazel Grace Lancaster is a seventeen-year-old cancer patient, and doesn’t know exactly how long she has left to live. Her mother worries about Hazel and depression so she begs Hazel to attend a cancer patients’ support group. One day at group Hazel meets the handsome Augustus Waters. They start to get to know each other and after the group meeting Hazel heads to Augustus’s house to spend some more time together. Before they part they agree to read each other’s favorite book.

Augustus and Hazel bond over their love for Hazel’s favorite book, An Imperial Affliction, and she relays her desire to hear from the mysterious author and how she’s written him several times but never heard back. Augustus takes Hazel completely seriously and arranges for them to fly to Amsterdam to meet the mysterious author so that Hazel can ask her questions. However, when they meet the author he isn’t anything like they imagined and things only seem to get worse for Hazel and Augustus.

Critical Evaluation:

This has become one of my favorite books recently. I’ve had several family members diagnosed with cancer and only one made it out alive, so I can understand the experiences of Hazel and Augustus fairly well, and this book captures the experience of living with (and dying of) cancer quite accurately. Despite tackling such a depressing and heavy subject, Green does so with enough humor to keep the reader turning pages. For example, when Augustus and Hazel are texting and Hazel talks about the depressing swing set in her yard and Augustus humorously fixates on the swing set and tells Hazel how he must see it. He wants to see and understand the world in the way that Hazel does, and it’s both immensely funny and sweet at the same time.

For anyone who has experienced cancer or know someone who has, I feel like this book is a must read. It captures the real feelings and situations but does so in an appropriately witty way that makes such a difficult topic not only bearable, but in a strange way also enjoyable.

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.

-from author’s website-

Justification of Selection:

Nearly everyone knows someone who has been affected by cancer, and this is a great way to show the mentality that patients have. It’s also a great story of tragic lovers, and is so full of wit and humor that despite the heavy subject matter, readers can still find a reason to smile.