Looking for Alaska by John Green was the first book I read that captured the feeling of the messy side of being a teenager. The whole book is about making mistakes and coping with them along with understanding and forgiving other people’s mistakes.
But it’s listed on the American Library Association’s Most Banned Book list for sexually explicit content and LGBTQIA+ content.
So yes, there is one scene that’s slightly explicit but that’s part of the point. It’s meant to depict real life and real life isn’t always PG.
To depict real life, books need real characters. The main character in Looking for Alaska, Miles Halter, has his own quirks and a strange obsession with death. Halter befriends a girl named Alaska and ultimately falls in love with her.
Alaska smokes and drinks and does pretty much everything a teenager isn’t supposed to do. But she’s also funny and lives by her own standards. Halter is trying desperately to fit in while Alaska is just living by her own rules.
As a whole, Alaska represents the good and bad parts of being a teenager. The fun times of less responsibility, with the downsides of being more prone to make reckless decisions and mistakes.
By banning Looking for Alaska, adults are taking away the opportunity for teenagers to see a realistic example of the consequences that come after making reckless decisions.
Overall, this book is not a good example of what to do. But that’s the point, it’s an example of what not to do. There are so many books that romanticize trying drugs, drinking and sex. Looking for Alaska deromanticizes those things, offering a different viewpoint that’s rarely found. Instead of banning it, I think we should be encouraging more teenagers to read it.
