Title:
The Fault In Our Stars
Author: John Green
ISBN: 9780525478817
Publisher: Dutton Books
Copyright: 2012
Genre: Fiction
Age
Range: 15+
Reader’s Annotation: Two cancer kids fall in love and deal
with the circumstances of their diseases.
Plot Summary: Hazel Grace Lancaster reluctantly attends a
cancer patients' support group. She is forced into it by her mother. She totes
along her oxygen tank. At one meeting, she endures the suffering of the rituals
and learns the name of the cute boy across from her, Augustus Waters. He is
there in support of their mutual friend Isaac who had eye cancer and now must
lose his other eye to a tumor. After the meeting, Augustus comes up to Hazel
and tells her she looks like Natalie Portman in V for Vendetta. He invites Hazel to his house to watch the movie.
During the movie, they talk about their experiences with cancer. Hazel lets him
know that she has terminal lung cancer that spread from previous thyroid cancer.
Augustus had osteosarcoma and had his leg amputated. He is living cancer free.
They exchange favorite book titles: his The
Price of Dawn; hers An Imperial
Affliction.
Hazel
explains that An Imperial Affliction
is about a girl named Anna who lives with cancer. She dies midsentence leaving
the reader without any sense of closure about the other characters. The author,
Peter Van Houten, has mysteriously disappeared to Amsterdam. A week after their first meeting,
Augustus and Hazel talk about the different meanings and symbolism within An Imperial Affliction. Augustus admits
to tracking down Van Houten's assistant Lidewij. He shares his email from Van
Houten with Hazel. She makes a list of other questions to ask, focusing on the
parents after Anna’s death. Van Houten eventually replies saying he could only
answer these questions in person. He invites her to stop by if she is ever in Amsterdam.
Augustus
takes Hazel on a Dutch themed picnic and breaks the news that he is using his
wish from the Genies, a charitable organization that grants wishes of kids with
cancer, on a trip for them to go to Amsterdam
to meet Van Houten. While she is thrilled about this, she is also troubled by
the eventuality that she will die and hurt him someday likening herself to a
grenade. She has a serious medical episode and goes to the ICU for a couple of
days. Augustus barely left the waiting room. There is a hitch in their plans
for Amsterdam.
Because of this episode, her team of doctors thinks she is not strong enough
for travel. Her primary doctor, Dr. Maria, convinces Hazel’s parents to let her
go to Amsterdam
with a chaperone. She is encouraged to live her life to the fullest.
They get to
Amsterdam and
have a wonderful evening and dinner. The next day they go to meet the prolific
genius Van Houten. It turns out that his is really a mean-spirited drunk who
answers none of the questions Hazel prepared. Lidewij is horrified by his
behavior and takes them on the tour of the Anne Frank house. Augustus and Hazel
share a romantic kiss and get applause from the other tourists. They go back to
the hotel and make love. When they get back, Augustus tells Hazel that while
she was in the ICU, he had a body scan that confirmed that the cancer had
returned and spread across his whole body. Augustus is now the grenade. How
will Hazel and Augustus cope with this tragedy?
Critical Evaluation: While The Fault in Our Stars has only won the Teen Book of the Year in
2013 from the Children’s Choice Book Awards, it has had much critical acclaim
landing as number one on the New York
Times Bestseller List. Author John Green has won the Printz award for Looking for Alaska and been nominated
for the Printz the following year for An
Abundance of Katherines. He has been nominated and won multiple other
awards. His work with The Fault in Our
Stars can be considered a contribution to the sub-genre of sick kid lit.
This is a group of books that shows the reader the day in the life of a kid who
is battling a disease that may or may not be terminal. There are plenty of
teens that are in this circumstance and need books that they can relate to. The
story itself balances the tragic circumstance of cancer at a young age with the
humor and positive life energy that is emitted from the characters. It is a
witty book that has enough humor for boys and romance for girls that ends in
tragedy.
Author Information: 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. Source -
http://johngreenbooks.com/bio-contact/
Curriculum Ties: Health
Challenge Issues: Language; Sex
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