“You
all smoke for fun, I smoke to die”, says Alaska Young from Looking for
Alaska, by John Green. Although my
book, Looking for Alaska, by John Green is a heart-warming book, I feel
that it should be banned because it includes such topics as sex, smoking and
alcohol. Looking for Alaska, I believe is an inappropriate book that should
be banned from Middle School libraries.
Looking
for Alaska is a book that teaches students and young adults
that smoking may make you cool. A
particularly compelling example of this is in the article “Banned Book Review: Looking for Alaska”, states that “Miles
never resists the pressure to smoke. Day
one, he lights up.” It is true that
Miles does start to smoke pretty early on in the book as soon as he begins
boarding school. It says in the book “I
inhaled. Coughed. Wheezed. Gasped for breath. Coughed again. Considered vomiting. Grabbed the swinging bench, head spinning, and
threw the cigarette to the ground and stomped on it, convinced my Great Perhaps
did not involve cigarettes.” This shows
that smoking is a big issue in this book and that most of the characters seem
to be chain smokers. High School kids
should not be smoking at their age, especially the amount that the characters in
this book are smoking per day. Smoking
isn’t good for you and can lead to difficulties with your health in the future,
but this book says it’s okay. (Green, 23)
Looking
for Alaska also has a lot of sexual content in it. They are also somewhat descriptive about this
topic which makes it even worse. Specifically,
a line in the book describes how when Alaska Young found her roommate, Myra
having sexual intercourse with her boyfriend. In another part of the book, Miles’ girlfriend
is about to perform oral sex. It says in
the book “she had looked up at me, but didn’t move, her face nanometers away
from my penis.” The article “Banned Book
Awareness: ‘Looking For Alaska’”, says
that “The Tennessee legislative recently passed a bill stating that teachers
cannot encourage ‘gateway sexual activity’ as part of the states’ abstinence-based
sexual education movement”. All of this
is saying that sex is okay at this age and that everyone should be doing it.
(Green, 147)
Drinking
is a strong part of Looking for Alaska and also inappropriate,
especially since it talks about underage drinking which happens quite a few
times in this book. Miles said once in
the book “We did not say: Don’t
drive. You’re drunk.” It also says in the article “Banned Book
Review: Looking For Alaska”, that
the book earned a spot on the American Library Association’s list as one of the
top ten frequently challenged books of 2012 because of drinking, smoking and
sex. This is not a good message for
readers at all. It is kind of
saying that you should drown your sorrows in alcohol. After all, Alaska Young died because of drunk
driving. This is why drinking is not
good, especially if you’re under age; it doesn’t solve anything for you.
(Green, 117)
It
is important to acknowledge that Looking for Alaska teaches you about
love and how life can really be like. However
it does not change the fact that this book had many inappropriate topics and
parts to it. They could have made the
book meaningful without the inappropriate parts. The unnecessary, inappropriate parts just
ruined the message the book was trying to make.
Thinking about it, Looking
for Alaska is an inappropriate book, and should be banned from our Middle
School libraries. It can make young
readers think that it is okay to do all of these things, when it really isn’t. Although I think, Looking for Alaska is
not age appropriate for Middle School readers, and should be removed from our
libraries, I think it is okay for High School to include in their libraries for
their students to read.
Bibliography
-http://www.juliatomiak.com/2013/09/banned-book-review-looking-for-alaska/
-http://bannedbooks.world.edu/2012/05/14/banned-books-awareness-looking-for-alaska/
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