CANR
WORK TITLE: Turtles All the Way Down
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S): Green, John Michael
BIRTHDATE: 8/24/1977
WEBSITE: http://www.sparksflyup.com/
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY: American
LAST VOLUME: CANR 263
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born August 24, 1977, in Indianapolis, IN; son of Mike and Sydney Green; married Sarah Urist; children: Henry, Alice.
EDUCATION:Kenyon College, B.A., 2000.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Worked as a chaplain in a children’s hospital; Booklist, Chicago, IL, production editor and book Reviewer; VlogBrothers, cofounder, 2007—.
AVOCATIONS:Writing, reading, child prodigies, conjoined twins, boxing, the State of Alabama, contemporary art, soccer, white wine, anagrams, YA books, bluegrass music, Islam, and last words.
AWARDS:Michael L. Printz Award, 2006, for Looking for Alaska; Edgar Award, Mystery Writers of America, 2009; Children’s Choice Book Award for Book of the Year for Teens, Children’s Book Council, 2011, for Will Grayson, Will Grayson; named one of the ten best fiction books of 2012, Time, 2012, for The Fault in Our Stars; “Author of the Year,” USA Today, 2014.
WRITINGS
Contributor of radio scripts, including to All Things Considered, National Public Radio, and to WBEZ, Chicago; contributor to national magazines.
The Fault in Our Stars was adapted for film by Fox 2000, 2014; Paper Towns was adapted for film by Fox 2000, 2015.
SIDELIGHTS
John Green worked briefly as a chaplain at a children’s hospital following his college graduation, a position he credits with giving him a great deal of insight into the thoughts of teenagers. He then moved on to Booklist, starting off as a temp and working his way up to production editor and occasional book reviewer. In addition, he contributes frequently to National Public Radio (NPR)’s All Things Considered and to Chicago NPR affiliate WBEZ. He got his start writing for NPR thanks to a work-related correspondence for Booklist with writer Amy Krouse Rosenthal, who had a periodic program on WBEZ. Rosenthal found Green’s e-mails entertaining and asked if he had ever written any short pieces that might be suitable for radio. Although he had not, Green claimed to have a few things that were appropriate; he then promptly went home and wrote several brief, humorous articles. Rosenthal selected one of them, “Nine Girls I’ve Kissed and What I Learned about Them from Google,” and aired it. Several additional articles followed, and eventually Green found himself recording a piece for All Things Considered. In an interview for MediaBistro.com, Green explained what it’s like to write for the radio: “I have no idea what would be good for the air. But I’ve always read my writing aloud to myself. … What I later learned is that when you’re writing for the radio, you have to dispense with flashy writing and abundant adjectives in favor of action verbs and funny jokes. Writing for the radio needs to be very, very tight, because people get bored easily.”
Green’s young adult novel Looking for Alaska is about a young man named Miles “Pudge” Halter, who leaves his home in Florida to attend Culver Creek, a boarding school in Birmingham, Alabama. The Alaska in the title is not the state but a girl Pudge meets in school who is the driving force of the clique that adopts Pudge. Neither popular nor outgoing at his previous school, Pudge now finds himself part of a colorful group that includes a trailer-park kid with an eerie memory whose name is Chip but goes by the nickname Colonel, a Japanese student named Takumi, a Romanian girl named Lara, and, of course, Alaska. His new friends are brilliant, willing to discuss Edna St. Vincent Millay and W.H. Auden, but they are also troublemakers with a tendency to drink in the woods and smoke in the school bathrooms. This insistence on bucking the system seems intriguing to Pudge, until Alaska’s extreme behavior gets her killed in a drunken collision with a police car, an incident that may or may not have been a suicide. Pudge, who has always had a fascination with the last words of famous people, suddenly finds himself facing death on a very personal level.
Peter D. Sieruta, in a review for Horn Book, called Green’s work a “mature novel, peopled with intelligent characters who talk smart, yet don’t always behave that way, and are thus notably complex and realistically portrayed teenagers.” A contributor to Publishers Weekly remarked that “the novel’s chief appeal lies in Miles’s well-articulated lust and his initial excitement about being on his own for the first time.” School Library Journal contributor Johanna Lewis commented that “Miles’s narration is alive with sweet, self-deprecating humor, and his obvious struggle to tell the story truthfully adds to his believability.” Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books critic Deborah Stevenson concluded: “Green gives the time-tested plot of boarding school maturation its full and considerable due, evoking the substantial appeal of the situation’s hothouse intensity, heady independence, and endless possibilities.”
Green himself admits that his own boarding school experience was a source of material for the book. In an interview for the Penguin Putnam Website, he remarked: “I like writing for teenagers because big questions—about love and religion and compassion and grief—matter to teens in a very visceral way. And it’s fun to write teenage characters. They’re funny and clever and feel so much so intensely.”
Green followed his first novel with An Abundance of Katherines, another young adult novel. The protagonist, math whiz Colin, uses a cleverly constructed Theorem of Underlying Katherine Predictability to help him understand why he has been dumped by nineteen girls named Katherine. Green worked on the actual theorem with University of Chicago assistant professor Daniel Bliss, and they proved it by adding in their own past histories with girlfriends, as well as those of celebrities like Jessica Simpson.
Seventeen-year-old Colin has a clever friend as well in Hassan, who suggests a road trip to get over his loss of the most recent Katherine. They spend the summer collecting the oral histories of Gutshot, Tennessee, for a woman who owns a factory that manufactures tampon strings and whose daughter, Lindsey, works with Colin on his theorem. Green includes an appendix that explains the math.
Paula Rohrlick reviewed the novel for Kliatt, writing: “Sophisticated teens will enjoy the wordplay and the warm friendships portrayed.” The story is “fully fun, challengingly complex and entirely entertaining,” concluded a Kirkus Reviews contributor.
Green’s next novel for young adults, Paper Towns, was released in 2008, and was named a Printz Medal Honor Book. The book repeats many of the themes of Green’s earlier works, featuring a young man who is fascinated by an offbeat young woman who insists on living life according to her own rules, yet finds herself weighed down by the pressure to conform. Seventeen-year-old Quentin Jacobson, known simply as Q to most, has spent most of his life in love with the girl next door, Margo Roth Spiegelman. The two were close when they were children, but as puberty hit and popularity became a more important aspect of teenage life, Margo had abandoned Q for the “in” crowd. But Q has continued to watch Margo from afar, and he is both surprised and intrigued one evening when she appears at his doorway and demands that he come with her on an adventure. He knows Margo’s adventures have a way of upsetting the balance—causing trouble, parental disdain, and so on. However, despite the potential for problems, and despite Margo’s abandonment of him in recent years, Q is curious and somewhat flattered that she has chosen him for what turns out to be a mission of revenge. So he goes with her.
The novel is set in Florida, outside Orlando, an area Green knows well, as he spent a good portion of his childhood there. As Margo and Q travel around to various locations she has marked as important in her quest for revenge on the people who have wronged her during her life, the reader gets an insider’s look at the region and comes to appreciate a side of Florida beyond amusement parks and golf courses. When Margo vanishes the next day, those locations and her actions serve as a set of clues to Q, who seems to be the only person who is concerned about her whereabouts. After such a final adventure, Q cannot decide whether Margo has simply run off—a highly unlikely and incredible decision to make just weeks before their high school graduation—or if she has taken final and disturbing steps end her life. Making matters worse, Q finds Margo’s parents uninterested in finding her, having long grown weary of their daughter’s strange adventures and the constant trouble that seemed to follow her. Friends and school officials are also less concerned than Q would have expected. So as he sets off on his quest to find out what happened to Margo, Q finds himself virtually alone, aided only by his two best friends, Ben and Radar.
Paper Towns is an entertaining treasure hunt of a novel, where the clues to Margo’s fate include a carefully annotated copy of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass and the notion of paper towns—fake towns marked on maps, some of which are designated so that the copyright holders of the maps can determine when another publisher has simply lifted their work and republished it, and others of which indicate planned subdivisions that never get completed, but which Margo felt represented something else entirely. The novel received much praise from reviewers, who found the unique scenario as well as the intriguing philosophy woven into Green’s prose as intriguing as the characters themselves. Johanna Lewis, in a review for School Library Journal, remarked that “Green’s prose is astounding—from hilarious, hyperintellectual trash talk and shtick, to complex philosophizing, to devastating observation and truths.” Michael Cart, in a review for Booklist, remarked of Green: “He’s a superb stylist, with a voice perfectly matched to his amusing, illuminating material,” and dubbed him “clever and wonderfully witty.” A contributor to Kirkus Reviews praised Green’s novel, citing it for its “genuine—and genuinely funny—dialogue, a satisfyingly tangled but not unbelievable mystery and delightful secondary characters.” In a review for Kliatt, Janis Flint-Ferguson declared that “language and situations make this a realistic high school experience as Green explores the issues and ramifications of authenticity and image.”
The premise of Will Grayson, Will Grayson, a collaboration with David Levithan, is that there are two Will Graysons whose very different lives in nearby towns intersect in a porn shop after disastrous nights on their own. Indie-rock-loving Will Grayson sees his relationship with his best friend, the flamboyantly gay Tiny Cooper, start to deteriorate, until he meets the depressed will grayson (his name always presented in lowercase), and friendship and love blossom.
“With honest language, interesting characters, and a heartfelt, gritty edge, this quirky yet down-to-earth collaboration … will keep readers turning pages,” remarked Diane P. Tuccillo in Library Journal. A Publishers Weekly critic predicted that the novel’s “message of embracing love in all its forms ought to find a receptive audience” among teens. A Kirkus Reviews contributor asserted that the story “will have readers simultaneously laughing, crying and singing at the top of their lungs.” Finding the two narratives somewhat unbalanced, Horn Book critic Claire E. Gross nonetheless wrote that “the quirky premise, savvy integration of online interactions … and epic spin on personal and interpersonal drama more than compensate.”
Green’s 2012 young adult novel, The Fault in Our Stars, is a love story circumscribed by a fatal diagnosis: sixteen-year-old Hazel Grace has lung cancer. Her prognosis is terminal, and the quick-witted Hazel spends her days just muddling through. When she meets Augustus Waters, the charismatic and dreamy new guy at the support group her parents force her to attend, the axis of her world tilts. In remission from bone cancer, Gus lives fully and shies from nothing. In his orbit, Hazel finds that her life offers more possibility, adventure, and love than she had ever imagined it could.
Allison Hunter Hill, writing in Voice of Youth Advocates, called The Fault in Our Stars “breath-taking in its ability to alternate between iridescent humor and raw tragedy. Hazel and Augustus are both fully realized, complex characters.” Horn Book critic Roger Sutton asserted that Green’s protagonist “may not be able to change the course of her stars, but she navigates their heartbreaking directives with humor, honesty, and … grace.” Noting that Green faithfully portrays the distasteful reality of cancer, New York Times Book Review contributor Natalie Standiford stated: “There are harrowing descriptions of pain, shame, anger and bodily fluids of every type. It is a narrative without rainbows or flamingoes.” However, Standiford continued, “unpleasant details do nothing to diminish the romance; in Green’s hands, they only make it more moving. He shows us true love—two teenagers helping and accepting each other through the most humiliating physical and emotional ordeals—and it is far more romantic than any sunset on the beach. As Hazel and Gus often remind each other, the world is not a wish-granting factory. Nevertheless, ‘a forever within the numbered days’ can be found, and as Hazel shows us, maybe that’s all we can ask for.’”
Turtles All the Way Down, published in 2017, follows sixteen-year-old Aza Holmes as she struggles with anxiety and battles obsessive and intrusive thoughts. Aza finds occasional solace in her best friend, Daisy Ramirez, and both girls are fascinated by the recent disappearance of local billionaire, Russell Pickett. Aza went to summer camp with Russell’s son, Davis, and Russell went missing right after being accused of corruption. There is a $100,000 reward for Russell’s recovery, so Aza and Daisy decide to join in the search. What follows is a caper that highlights Daisy’s and Aza’s friendship, leads to a reunion with Davis, and highlights the ways in which mental health affect every aspect of life.
As USA Today correspondent Brian Truitt put it, “Green expertly communicates the confusion and pain of Aza’s invasive thoughts, the way they spin out of control and their inescapable hold on her. But there’s also a neat depth to the way Turtles explores the definition of happy endings.” Alessandra Montalto, writing in the New York Times Online, was also impressed, and she announced: “I . . . wasn’t prepared for the ending of this novel. It’s so surprising and moving and true that I became completely unstrung, incapable of reading it to my husband without breaking down. One needn’t be suffering like Aza to identify with it. One need only be human. Everyone, at some point, knows what it’s like when the mind develops a mind of its own.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, March 1, 2005, Ilene Cooper, “Last Words from a First Novelist,” interview, p. 1181; August 1, 2006, Cindy Dobrez, review of An Abundance of Katherines, p. 75; June 1, 2008, Michael Cart, review of Paper Towns, p. 79.
Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books, February, 2005, Deborah Stevenson, review of Looking for Alaska, p. 252.
Christian Century, August 25, 2013, Nancy Hull, review of The Fault in Our Stars.
Horn Book, March-April, 2005, Peter D. Sieruta, review of Looking for Alaska, p. 201; September-October, 2006, Claire E. Gross, review of An Abundance of Katherines, p. 583; September 1, 2008, Claire E. Gross, review of Paper Towns; May-June, 2010, Roger Sutton, review of The Fault in Our Stars, p. 105; March-April, 2012, Claire E. Gross, review The Fault in Our Stars, p. 105.
Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, February 1, 2009, Michael Bailey, review of Paper Towns, p. 448.
Kirkus Reviews, March 1, 2005, review of Looking for Alaska, p. 287; August 15, 2006, review of An Abundance of Katherines, p. 841; September 1, 2008, review of Paper Towns; March 15, 2010, review of Will Grayson, Will Grayson; January 15, 2012, review of The Fault in Our Stars.
Kliatt, March, 2005, Paula Rohrlick, review of Looking for Alaska, p. 12; September, 2006, Paula Rohrlick, review of An Abundance of Katherines, p. 12; September 1, 2008, Janis Flint-Ferguson, review of Paper Towns, p. 11.
New York Times Book Review, November 12, 2006, Regina Marler, review of An Abundance of Katherines, p. 40; January 15, 2012, Natalie Standiford, review of The Fault in Our Stars, p. 16.
Publishers Weekly, February 7, 2005, review of Looking for Alaska, p. 61; July 25, 2005, September 4, 2006, review of An Abundance of Katherines, p. 69; March 1, 2010, review of Will Grayson, Will Grayson, p. 54; January 16, 2012, review of The Fault in Our Stars, p. 57.
School Library Journal, February, 2005, Johanna Lewis, review of Looking for Alaska, p. 136; September, 2006, Amy S. Pattee, review of An Abundance of Katherines, p. 206; October 1, 2008, Johanna Lewis, review of Paper Towns, p. 148; April 1, 2009, review of Paper Towns, p. 56; March, 2010, Diane P. Tuccillo, review of Will Grayson, Will Grayson, p. 158; February, 2012, Ragan O’Malley, review of The Fault in Our Stars, p. 120.
Teacher Librarian, December, 2012, Kathleen Odean, review of The Fault in Our Stars.
USA Today, October 11, 2017, Brian Truitt, review of Turtles All the Way Down.
Voice of Youth Advocates, April, 2012, Allison Hunter Hill, review of The Fault in Our Stars, p. 56.
ONLINE
BookLoons, http://www.bookloons.com/ (October 21, 2009), Kerrily Sapet, review of An Abundance of Katherines, and “John Green,” interview.
BookPage Online, http://www.bookpage.com/ (October 21, 2009), Linda M. Castellitto, “Lost Loves: It All Adds up for Teen Author John Green,” interview.
Bookslut, http://www.bookslut.com/ (October 21, 2009), Beth Dugan, review of Looking for Alaska.
Curled Up with a Good Kids Book, http://www.curledupkids.com/ (October 21, 2009), Douglas R. Cobb, review of Paper Towns.
Entertainment Weekly Online, http://shelf-life.ew.com/ (August 2, 2013), Stephan Lee, author interview.
Guardian Online, https://www.theguardian.com/ (November 15, 2017), Matt Haig, review of Turtles All the Way Down.
John Green Website, http://johngreenbooks.com (November 15, 2017).
Mediabistro.com, http://www.mediabistro.com/ (October 21, 2009), “Pop Quiz: John Green,” interview.
Musings of the Book Goddess, http://musingsofthebookgoddess.wordpress.com/ (October 21, 2009), review of Paper Towns.
Nerdfighters, http://nerdfighters.ning.com/ (October 21, 2009), “Frequently Asked Questions.”
New York Times Online, https://www.nytimes.com/ (November 15, 2017), Alessandra Montalto, review of Turtles All the Way Down.
NPR Website, http://www.npr.org/ (January 28, 2012), “‘Star’-Crossed: When Teens with Cancer Fall in Love,” author interview.
Orlando Sentinel Online, http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/ (October 21, 2009), Rebecca Swain, review of Paper Towns.
Penguin Putnam Website, http://www.penguinputnam.com/ (October 21, 2009), “Q&A with Author John Green.”
Pop Goes the Library, http://www.popgoesthelibrary.com/ (October 21, 2009), “Interview with John Green.”
Readers Quill, http://www.readersquill.com/ (October 21, 2009), review of Paper Towns.
So Adam, How’s That Book?, http://soadam.blogspot.com/ (October 21, 2009), review of Paper Towns.
Teenreads.com, http://www.teenreads.com/ (October 21, 2009), Alexis Burling, review of Looking for Alaska; Brian Farrey, review of An Abundance of Katherines; “John Green,” interview.
Time Online, http://time.com/ (November 15, 2017), author interview.
Wake County Website, http://wakecounty.wordpress.com/ (October 21, 2009), review of Paper Towns.
YA Book Central Website, http://www.yabookcentral.com/ (October 21, 2009), Ed Goldberg, review of Paper Towns.*
Novels
Looking for Alaska (2005)
An Abundance of Katherines (2006)
Paper Towns (2008)
Will Grayson, Will Grayson (2010) (with David Levithan)
The Fault in Our Stars (2012)
Turtles All the Way Down (2017)
Omnibus
Let It Snow (2008) (with Maureen Johnson and Lauren Myracle)
John Green Limited Edition Boxed Set (2012)
John Green The Collection (2013)
John Green Box Set (2013)
Collections
What You Wish For: A Book for Darfur (2011) (with Jeanne DuPrau, Nikki Giovanni, Karen Hesse, Alexander McCall Smith, Naomi Shihab Nye, Joyce Carol Oates, Sofia Quintero and Jane Yolen)
Awards
Michael L. Printz Award Best Book winner (2006) : Looking for Alaska
Michael L. Printz Award Best Book nominee (2007) : An Abundance of Katherines
John Green is the award-winning, #1 bestselling author of Looking for Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines, Paper Towns, Will Grayson, Will Grayson (with David Levithan), and The Fault in Our Stars. His many accolades include the Printz Medal, a Printz Honor, and the Edgar Award. John has twice been a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize and was selected by TIME magazine as one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World. With his brother, Hank, John is one half of the Vlogbrothers (youtube.com/vlogbrothers) and co-created the online educational series CrashCourse (youtube.com/crashcourse). You can join the millions who follow him on Twitter @johngreen and Instagram @johngreenwritesbooks or visit him online at johngreenbooks.com.
John lives with his family in Indianapolis, Indiana.
John Green on Mental Illness and Writing a Book That Mirrors His Own Life
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By Megan McCluskey October 12, 2017
Turtles All the Way Down is the first novel from YA fan-favorite John Green since the release of his 2012 phenomenon The Fault in Our Stars. The book tells the story of Aza Holmes, a 16-year-old girl living in Indianapolis who attempts to solve the mystery of a fugitive billionaire while grappling with severe anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder.
TIME recently spoke with Green about the novel and how it explores the way mental illness can affect daily life. The 40-year-old author has previously laid bare his own struggles with mental health, a topic that he thinks should be discussed openly.
TIME: How did you want to depict Indianapolis, where you were born and now live?
John Green: My wife Sarah and I have lived there for 10 years now and I love it. I wanted to write about it the way that I think most teenagers relate to their hometowns — they have a certain fondness for the place they’re from, but they see with great clarity what’s wrong with the place that they’re from too.
Where did this story come from? How did you come up with the idea to have a fugitive billionaire propel the action?
I wanted to write a detective story about a detective whose brain disorder is unhelpful. Because there’s so many detective stories about obsessive people who are brilliant detectives because of their obsessiveness and my experience with obsessiveness has been more or less the complete opposite. I wanted to write a detective story where the plot keeps getting interrupted by this person’s inability to live in the world in the way that she wants to. And then I needed some big, somewhat fantastical mystery. I also wanted to write about the ways that different kinds of privilege intersect in people’s lives and the ways that they blind you.
You’ve been extremely open about talking about your own struggles with mental illness. What was it like to write about the specific type of OCD and anxiety you’ve suffered from?
I had to write with enough distance from myself to make it OK, to make it feel safe. And so Aza has somewhat different focai of her obsessive concerns and the behaviors she uses to manage them. I still can’t really talk directly about my own obsessions. The word triggering has become so broadly used in popular culture, but anyone who has experienced an anxiety attack knows how badly they want to avoid it. It was really hard, especially at first, to write about this thing that’s been such a big part of my life. But in another way, it was really empowering because I felt like if I could give it form or expression I could look at it and I could talk about it directly rather than being scared of it. And one of the main things I wanted to do in the book was to get at how isolating it can be to live with mental illness and also how difficult it can be for the people who are around you because you’re so isolated.
You emphasize the idea that there’s no magical cure for mental illness throughout the book. Why was it important to you to convey that message?
We really like stories that involve conquering obstacles and involve victory over adversity. And I love those stories too. It’s just that hasn’t been my story with mental illness and I didn’t really want it to be Aza’s. For me, it’s not something I expect to defeat in my life. It’s not like a battle I expect to win. It’s something I expect to live with and still have a fulfilling life.
What inspired you to use the turtles all the way down story — an anecdote that illustrates the problem with infinite regression — as a metaphor for Aza’s struggle?
I love that story. When I first heard it I was a college student. I thought that it was about how stupid superstition is and how science is right and everyone else is wrong. And now I realize — or I think now — that that’s not the point of the story at all. The point of the story is that the scientist is right but the old woman saying that the world rests on a turtles all the way down situation, she’s also right. They’re both right because obviously the world is a sphere — I’m not like a flat-Earther or anything —but the world is also the stories we tell about it. The stories we tell about it matter. They shape the actual world and they shape our actual lives. So that is very helpful to me in thinking about why I like writing and reading. But it also is very helpful to me in reminding me that I do have some say in framing my own experience. Even though I may go for long periods of time where I don’t have control over my thoughts and that is scary and destabilizing for my sense of self, I do have some say in the story of my life.
Your books are read by people of all ages. But what do you feel is the importance of incorporating issues such as mental illness into books for young adults?
I think there have been lots of good YA books about mental illness over the years. For me, one of the reasons I like writing YA books is because I love sharing a shelf with the other YA books that are being published now. I just think it’s a really wonderful time in young adult literature. I also like writing about teenagers because they’re doing stuff for the first time and it’s really intense. And one of the things they’re doing for the first time is asking the big questions about suffering and meaning and whether meaning is inherent in human life or it’s something we have to construct.
How do you feel this book fits into the current conversation about mental health and the push by many to destigmatize it?
I think some progress has been made in destigmatizing mental illness. I think there’s still a lot of stigma in the workplace. I think unfortunately there’s still a lot of stigma around hiring. I’m not a psychologist, I’m definitely not an expert on this stuff but one of the problems with the stigmatization is that it compounds the isolation. And I really hope we can keep breaking that down because I remember how alone I felt in it in high school and it was a big part of what made it so difficult to bear.
This is the second book in a row you’ve written from a female perspective. What do you find challenging about writing characters that you don’t directly identify with?
Well it’s always challenging. Any character is a sort of jump in empathy. Any time you’re writing from the perspective of a fictional character, you’re imagining what it’s like to be not you. And that’s one of the things I love about writing fiction is that it feels like an escape from my brain which can sometimes feel like not that fun of a place to hang out. I hope [Aza] seems real to people.
And you also had this great female friendship between Aza and Daisy in this one.
Yeah I really wanted to write about friendship. I wanted to write about all the different kinds of love that can sustain and support you. Romantic love is the one that we focus on the most in our cultural conversation and it’s certainly very important for a lot of people. But for a lot of people, other kinds of love are the most important. When I was in high school, it was the love of my friends that got me through.
Turtles All the Way Down is your first book since the massive success of The Fault in Our Stars. Can you talk about your experience writing the follow-up to that?
As long as I felt like I was writing the follow-up to that, I wasn’t writing. It was an incredible experience and an incredible privilege to have so many people respond to that book so kindly. It meant a lot to me but it did also mean that when I started trying to write again, I felt like there were people watching over my shoulder and that made it impossible for a long time. I think it was impossible for a variety of reasons. I also think I just had a period of bad mental health, which happens sometimes. Honestly, I felt like maybe I wouldn’t write another book and I got to be OK with that.
Can you tell me a little bit about fitting so many literary references into your work? What’s the process there?
In this story they came along the way or in some cases earlier. Some of the stuff was scavenged for parts from previous failed attempts at writing a book. But like that line in Ulysses where Molly Bloom says, “O Jamesy let me up out of this,” that’s something that I have said in my own life to whoever I feel like is forcing me to think these intrusive thoughts. That’s something that I’ve said thousands of times in my head or out loud.
Are there any YA authors right now that you’d like to highlight as deserving of more attention?
Angie Thomas’s book The Hate U Give is getting a lot of attention, but it should get more. It should be a book that’s being read, I think, in every high school English class in the country. It’s such a special book. I think it’s going to be remembered the way we talk now about The Outsiders. There’s also a book called Piecing Me Together by Renee Watson that is a brilliant look at the role that art plays in the lives of young people, but also all of these different ways that race and gender and privilege intersect in the life of this one really extraordinary young woman. That book I have been thinking about nonstop for the last six months.
What’s on your radar? What are you reading right now?
I just finished Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng which is amazing. It’s so good. You’ll read like the first six pages and you’ll be like this is going to be the best. And it’s that good all the way through.
John Green (author)
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This article is about the writer and YouTube vlogger. For other people with the same name, see John Green (disambiguation).
John Green
Green at VidCon 2014
Born
John Michael Green
August 24, 1977 (age 40)
Indianapolis, Indiana, U.S.
Occupation
Author, vlogger
Nationality
American
Alma mater
Kenyon College (BA)
Period
2005–present
Genre
Young adult fiction, bildungsroman, romance, radio, video
Notable works
Looking for Alaska
An Abundance of Katherines
Paper Towns
Let It Snow: Three Holiday Romances
Will Grayson, Will Grayson
The Fault in Our Stars
Turtles All The Way Down
Vlogbrothers
Crash Course
SciShow
Notable awards
Michael L. Printz Award
2006 Looking for Alaska
Edgar Award
2009 Paper Towns
Spouse
Sarah Urist (m. 2006[1])
Children
2
Relatives
Hank Green (brother)
Signature
Website
johngreenbooks.com
Green at the Loft Literary Center, Minneapolis, in 2008
John Michael Green (born August 24, 1977) is an American author, vlogger, writer, producer, actor and editor. He won the 2006 Printz Award for his debut novel, Looking for Alaska,[2] and his sixth novel, The Fault in Our Stars, debuted at number one on The New York Times Best Seller list in January 2012.[3] The 2014 film adaptation opened at number one at the box office.[4] In 2014, Green was included in Time magazine's list of The 100 Most Influential People in the World.[5] Another film based on a Green novel, Paper Towns, was released on July 24, 2015.
Aside from being a novelist, Green is also well known for his YouTube ventures. In 2007, he launched the VlogBrothers channel with his brother, Hank Green. Since then, John and Hank have launched events such as Project for Awesome and VidCon and created a total of 11 online series, including Crash Course, an educational channel teaching Literature, History, and Science, later joined by courses in Economics, US Government, Astronomy, Politics, Philosophy, Psychology, Mythology, Sociology, Chemistry, US History, World History, Computer Science, Games, and Film History/Production.[6]
Contents [hide]
1
Early life and career
2
Writings
3
Public image
4
Other projects
4.1
Crash Course
4.2
VlogBrothers
4.3
VidCon
4.4
Project for Awesome
4.5
Mental Floss
4.6
Dear Hank & John
4.7
Film producing
5
Personal life
6
Works
6.1
Books
6.2
Short stories
6.3
Other
6.4
Filmography
6.5
As producer
7
Awards and nominations
8
See also
9
References
10
External links
Early life and career[edit]
Green was born in Indianapolis, Indiana to Mike and Sydney Green.[7] Three weeks after he was born, his family moved to Michigan, then later Birmingham, Alabama, and finally to Orlando, Florida.[8][9] He attended Glenridge Middle School and Lake Highland Preparatory School in Orlando.[10] He later attended Indian Springs School outside of Birmingham, Alabama, graduating in 1995.[11] He later used Indian Springs as the inspiration for the main setting of his first book, Looking for Alaska.[12][13] Green graduated from Kenyon College in 2000 with a double major in English and religious studies.[14] He has spoken about being bullied and how it had made life as a teenager miserable for him.[15]
After graduating from college, Green spent five months working as a student chaplain at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio while enrolled at the University of Chicago Divinity School (although he never actually attended the school).[16] He intended to become an Episcopal priest, but his experiences of working in a hospital with children suffering from life-threatening illnesses inspired him to become an author, and later to write The Fault in Our Stars.[17]
Green lived for several years in Chicago, where he worked for the book review journal Booklist as a publishing assistant and production editor while writing Looking for Alaska.[9] While there, he reviewed hundreds of books, particularly literary fiction and books about Islam or conjoined twins.[18] He has also critiqued books for The New York Times Book Review and created original radio essays for NPR's All Things Considered and WBEZ, Chicago's public radio station.[18] Green later lived in New York City for two years while his wife attended graduate school.
Writings[edit]
Green's first novel, Looking for Alaska, published by Dutton Children's Books in 2005, is a school story and teen romance inspired by his experiences at Indian Springs, fictionalized as Culver Creek Preparatory High School.[19] The novel was awarded the annual Michael L. Printz Award by the American Library Association, recognizing the year's "best book written for teens, based entirely on its literary merit."[2] It also appeared on the ALA's annual list, "Top 10 Best Books for Young Adults." The film rights were purchased in 2005 by Paramount, which hired Josh Schwartz as writer and director, but five years later, with no progress on the project, Green told fans that, while he "desperately loved" the screenplay, there seemed to be little interest at Paramount.[20] As sales of Looking for Alaska continued to increase in 2011, Green showed mixed feelings about a movie, which he felt would threaten readers' "intense and private connection to the story."[21] In 2012, the book reached The New York Times Best Seller list for children's paperbacks.[22] Green's second novel, An Abundance of Katherines (Dutton, 2006) was a runner-up for the Printz Award and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.
With fellow young adult authors Maureen Johnson and Lauren Myracle, Green collaborated on Let It Snow: Three Holiday Romances (Speak, 2008), which consists of three interconnected short stories, including Green's "A Cheertastic Christmas Miracle," each set in the same small town on Christmas Eve, during a massive snowstorm. In November 2009, that book reached Number 10 on The New York Times Best Seller list for paperback children's books.[23]
In 2008, Green's third novel, Paper Towns, debuted at number five on The New York Times Best Seller list for children's books, and the novel was made into the 2015 film Paper Towns.[24][25] In 2009, Paper Towns was awarded the 2009 Edgar Award for Best Young Adult Novel[26] and the 2010 Corine Literature Prize.[27]
After this, Green and his friend, young-adult writer David Levithan, collaborated on the novel Will Grayson, Will Grayson, which was published by Dutton in 2010.[28][29] It was a runner-up (Honor Book) for two of the annual ALA awards, the Stonewall Book Award (for excellence in LGBT children's and young adult literature),[30] and the Odyssey Award for Excellence in Audiobook Production.
In August 2009, Green announced he was writing a new book entitled The Sequel,[31] which was later scrapped. His sixth book, The Fault in Our Stars, was released in January 2012. He crafted the novel by collaborating with Dutton editor Julie Strauss-Gabel.[32] Green explained that several parts of The Sequel were reworked into The Fault in Our Stars.[33] Green signed all 150,000 copies of the first printing and his wife and his brother applied their own symbols, a Yeti and an Anglerfish (known as the "Hanklerfish"), respectively. The New York Times Best Seller list for children's books listed The Fault in Our Stars at number one for two weeks in January and February 2012.[3][34] The novel has been made into a major motion picture of the same name, released in the United States on June 6, 2014.[35]
In late 2013, Green stated that he is writing a new book with the working title The Racket.[36] He sold 5,000 words of a rough draft on IndieGoGo for $10 in order to raise money as part of the Project for Awesome charity event.[37] On November 16, 2014, Green wrote on his Tumblr page that he is not working on The Racket but is working on something else with a different title.[38]
Although his novels have earned mostly positive critical reception, Green has discussed what he believes to be flaws in his novels, when he looked at them in retrospect.[39] Additionally, in response to a fan's tweet, Green apologized for using the word retarded in Paper Towns, stating, "Yeah, I regret it. At the time, I thought an author's responsibility was to reflect language as I found it, but now ... eight years later, I don't feel like a book about humanizing the other benefited from dehumanizing language," adding, "it's not in the movie, and I won't use the word again in a book or elsewhere."[40]
In September 2015, Green announced that he would be taking a break from social media in order to focus on writing his next book.[41] In August 2016, Green stated that over the next ten months he would be limiting his public appearances in order to finish a draft of the new book.[42] But on September 20, Green took to his YouTube channel that he may not publish another book, citing his current writing experience as "this intense pressure, like people were watching over my shoulder while I was writing".[43]
On June 22, 2017, it was announced that Green's fifth solo novel would be entitled Turtles All The Way Down. It was released on October 10 of 2017.[44]
Public image[edit]
Green at VidCon 2012
Green's rapid rise to fame and idiosyncratic voice are credited with creating a major shift in the young adult fiction market. While reviewing the Andrew Smith young-adult novel, Winger, A. J. Jacobs of The New York Times used the term "GreenLit" to describe young adult books which contain "sharp dialogue, defective authority figures, occasional boozing, unrequited crushes and one or more heartbreaking twists."[45] According to the Wall Street Journal, "[s]ome credit him with ushering in a new golden era for contemporary, realistic, literary teen fiction, following more than a decade of dominance by books about young wizards, sparkly vampires and dystopia. A blurb or Twitter endorsement from Mr. Green can ricochet around the Internet and boost sales, an effect book bloggers call "the John Green effect." Zareen Jaffery, executive editor of Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers said "What I really like about what people are calling 'the John Green effect' is that there's more of an interest in authentic, genuine, relatable characters."[6]
Young-adult readers and authors, including Green himself, have been critical of the terms.[46] Green has voiced his disagreement with the idea that he is single-handedly responsible for launching or promoting any one individual's career.[46] Green has commented on these arguments: "My concern is that popular work by women receives far more vitriolic criticism from the public (like, in terms of number of demeaning jokes...) than popular work created by men... Also, I would like to see equal attention given to the sexism in popular work by men, from Nicholas Sparks to for instance J. D. Salinger. Catcher in the Rye—although I like it very much—is profoundly and disturbingly misogynistic and yet seems to get a critical pass both online and off. This happens a lot, I think, with books by men, and I don't want male writers (including me!) to get that pass."[47] Relating to this issue, Green has stated that he identifies as a feminist.[48]
In 2015, a Tumblr post from user virjn generated media controversy, as it claimed Green is "a creep who panders to teenage girls so that he can amass some weird cult-like following."[49][50] Other users commented on the post, criticizing his writing and tagging Green to bring the post to his attention.[49][50] Green responded to the post, defending himself, stating, "Throwing that kind of accusation around is sick and libelous and most importantly damages the discourse around the actual sexual abuse of children."[50] Green added that he would use the social media website less often, stating, "I'm not angry or anything like that. I just need some distance for my well-being."[40] Fellow young-adult authors, Rainbow Rowell and Maggie Stiefvater came to Green's defense. Stiefvater wrote on Tumblr, "You can have your own opinions on Green's books and Internet presence, but the fact remains that he is a very real positive influence on thousands of teens. You're not just making sure you can't have nice things. You're taking away other people's nice things." In a subsequent email to USA Today, Stiefvater stated, "I had to say something. Not because of the nature of the posts, although they were distasteful and borderline libel. But because the grotesquerie was being force-fed to the author."[50]
On July 14, 2015, Greg Ballard, the mayor of Indianapolis, proclaimed that that day would be "John Green Day" in his city.[51] That month, Teresa Jacobs, the mayor of Orange County, Florida, declared that July 17 would also be John Green Day.[52]
Other projects[edit]
John (left) with his brother, Hank
Crash Course[edit]
Main article: Crash Course (YouTube)
Crash Course is a project made by Green and his brother, Hank Green, aimed to educate high school students, but it has diversified in to another channel specifically aimed at children, called Crash Course Kids.
In 2012, following a grant from Google, the brothers launched a pair of short-format educational video series entitled Crash Course, which presents series on World History, American History, Literature (hosted by John), Chemistry, Anatomy & Physiology, Biology, Ecology, Psychology, and Philosophy (hosted by Hank), Astronomy, Games, Big History, Economics, Intellectual Property, Physics, Film History, Mythology, Sociology and Computer Science (hosted by people other than the two brothers).[53]
VlogBrothers[edit]
Main article: VlogBrothers
Green appearing in a Vlogbrothers video in 2016.
In 2007, John and his brother Hank began a video blog project called Brotherhood 2.0 which ran from January 1 to December 31 of that year. The two agreed that they would forgo all text-based communication with each other for the duration of the project, instead maintaining their relationship by exchanging video blogs, each submitting one to the other on each alternate weekday. These videos were uploaded to a YouTube channel called "vlogbrothers" (as well as the brothers' own website) where they reached a wide audience.[54][55] In what would have been the project's final video, the brothers revealed that they would extend their video correspondence indefinitely,[56] and as of 2017 they have continued exchanging their unique vlogs.
Since the project's inception, the duo have gained a wide reaching international fanbase whose members identify collectively as "Nerdfighters".[57] The group, in collaboration with the two brothers, promote and participate in a number of humanitarian efforts, including the Project for Awesome, an annual charity fundraiser, a Nerdfighter lending group on the microfinancing website Kiva which to date has loaned over $4 million to entrepreneurs in the developing world[58] and the Foundation to Decrease World Suck, the brothers' own charity.[59]
In addition to the main VlogBrothers channel, the brothers have also created a number of side-projects. These include Truth or Fail, a YouTube game show hosted by Hank and a variety of guest hosts, and HankGames (either "with..." or "without Hank"), which consists mostly of screen-capture footage of various videogames.[60]
VidCon[edit]
Main article: VidCon
Green pictured smiling at VidCon 2012
VidCon is an annual conference for the online video community. The conference was created by the Greens in 2010 in response to the growing online video community. Hank states, "We wanted to get as much of the online video community together, in one place, in the real world for a weekend. It's a celebration of the community, with performances, concerts, and parties; but it's also a discussion of the explosion in community-based online video."[61] The event draws many popular YouTube users, as well as their fans, and provides room for the community to interact. The event also contains an industry conference for people and businesses working in the online video field.
Project for Awesome[edit]
Main article: Project for Awesome
In 2007, the Greens introduced the charity project entitled the Project for Awesome (P4A),[62] a project in which YouTube users take two days, traditionally December 17 and 18, to create videos promoting charities or non-profit organizations of their choosing. In 2012, they raised a total of $483,446, surpassing their goal of $100,000.[63] The event has continued annually, gaining more support and higher donations each passing year. In 2015, the grand total of money raised was $1,546,384.[64] Money is raised through donations to an Indiegogo campaign where supporters can pledge money and receive donated perks like signed photographs, books, and art in return. The Green brothers also donate one cent for each comment made on a Project for Awesome video during the event. There is a live stream that lasts for the duration of the Project for Awesome, which is hosted by John Green, Hank Green, and other YouTube personalities.
Mental Floss[edit]
Main article: Mental Floss
Green is the frontman for the YouTube channel for the magazine Mental Floss. He had previously been a contributing writer for the magazine for a period in the mid-2000s.[65] Alongside other presenters, like Craig Benzine and Elliott Morgan, John Green presents "The List Show" in which he lists off interesting facts centered on one particular subject matter, such as "26 amusing facts about amusement parks".[66] These episodes are directed by Mark Olsen and are produced by John and Hank Green and Stan Muller.
Dear Hank & John[edit]
Main article: Dear Hank & John
In June 2015, John Green and his brother Hank Green started a weekly podcast titled Dear Hank & John.[67] Taking a mainly humorous tone, each podcast opens with John reading a poem that he selected for the week before the brothers read a series of questions submitted by listeners and offering their advice. The podcast closes with a news segment with two standard topics: Mars, presented by Hank, and AFC Wimbledon, presented by John.
Film producing[edit]
Green served as an executive producer for the Paper Towns movie. He has also entered into a production deal with the film studio Fox 2000 (which made the adaptation of The Fault in Our Stars).[68] Green announced that Fox 2000 will be making a movie about the formation of AFC Wimbledon, a soccer team that he supports. He will serve as producer along with Wyck Godfrey and Marty Bowen under their production banner Temple Hill Productions (who produced The Fault in Our Stars and Paper Towns).[69]
Personal life[edit]
Green lives in Indianapolis, Indiana with his wife, Sarah Urist Green, whom he married on May 21, 2006.[70] She worked as the Curator of Contemporary Art at Indianapolis Museum of Art before leaving to start The Art Assignment, a web series with PBS.[71] In videos on the VlogBrothers channel, Sarah Green is referred to as "the Yeti" due to her not appearing visibly on camera.[1] She made an appearance on YouTube in a Google Hangout video chat with President Obama, during which she and her husband asked the President whether they should name their unborn daughter Eleanor or Alice.[72] They have two children, Henry and Alice, as well as a West Highland Terrier named "Willy".[73] Green has stated that he is an Episcopalian Christian,[74] but mentioned in the tenth episode of his podcast, Dear Hank & John, that he was married in a Catholic church.[75] He has been an advocate for refugees, stating that "for those of you who share my faith, Jesus is awfully unambiguous about the poor, shelterless, and imprisoned".[76] John is an avid fan of Liverpool F.C. of the Premier League and has publicly discussed English football.[77] As of 2015, John is also a shorts and stand sponsor of English League One club AFC Wimbledon, of whom he is also a keen admirer.[78] John has also stated that he is a casual supporter of his local American side Indy Eleven, and has been to some of their games.[79]
Green has obsessive-compulsive disorder[80] and has discussed his struggles with mental illness extensively on YouTube.[81][82][83][84]
Works[edit]
Books[edit]
Looking for Alaska (2005) (ISBN 0-525-47506-0)
An Abundance of Katherines (2006) (ISBN 0-525-47688-1)
Let It Snow: Three Holiday Romances – with Maureen Johnson and Lauren Myracle (2008) (ISBN 0-142-41214-7)
Paper Towns (2008) (ISBN 978-0142414934)
Will Grayson, Will Grayson – with David Levithan (2010) (ISBN 0-525-42158-0)
The Fault in Our Stars (2012) (ISBN 0-525-47881-7)
Turtles All the Way Down (2017) (ISBN 0-525-55536-6)
Short stories[edit]
"The Approximate Cost of Loving Caroline", Twice Told: Original Stories Inspired by Original Artwork by Scott Hunt (2006)
"The Great American Morp", 21 Proms, eds. David Levithan and Daniel Ehrenhaft (2007)
"Freak the Geek", Geektastic: Stories from the Nerd Herd (2009)
"Reasons", What You Wish For (2011)
Double on Call and Other Short Stories (2012)
Other[edit]
(2009) Thisisnottom, an interactive novel hidden behind riddles.[85][86]
(2010) Zombicorns, an online Creative Commons licensed zombie novella.[87]
(2012) The War for Banks Island, a sequel to Zombicorns released via email to people who donated to P4A.[88][89]
The Sequel, an unfinished novel, much of which was reworked into The Fault in Our Stars. The first 6,000 words are available via email to P4A donors.
(2013) The Space & The Cat and the Mouse, a P4A book collating an extract from an early draft of his new novel and a short story from childhood.
(2014) An Imperial Affliction, extracts used as a prop in the film adaptation of The Fault in Our Stars and later released to P4A donors.
Filmography[edit]
Year
Title
Role
Notes
2007–present
Vlogbrothers
Himself
Also Director, writer, producer, editor, cinematographer, and stunt performer.
2012–present
Crash Course
Himself/Host
Also Writer and producer
2014
The Fault in Our Stars
Jackie's Dad - Airport Scene
Uncredited
2015
Paper Towns
Becca's father (Voice)
Uncredited, Also Producer
As producer[edit]
Year
Title
Notes
2013
Mental Floss
Also Writer
2014
The Art Assignment
Awards and nominations[edit]
Year
Award
Ceremony
Work
Category
Result
Ref
2006
Michael L. Printz Award
Looking For Alaska
N/A
Won
[90]
2007
An Abundance of Katherines
N/A
Nominated (Honor)
[91]
2009
Edgar Allan Poe Award
Paper Towns
Best Young Adult Novel
Won
[26]
2010
Corine Literature Prize
Paper Towns
Young Adult Novel
Won
[92]
2012
Indiana Authors Award
N/A
National Author Award
Won
[93]
2013
Children's Choice Book Awards
The Fault in Our Stars
Teen Book of the Year
Won
[94]
2013
Los Angeles Times Book Prize
N/A
Innovator's Award
Won
[95]
2014
mtvU Fandom Awards
N/A
Visionary Award
Won
[96]
John Green is the #1 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 the 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 55 languages and over 24 million copies are in print. John is also an active Twitter user with more than 5 million followers.
In June 2014, the movie adaptation of The Fault in Our Stars was released, directed by Josh Boone, produced by Fox 2000 and Temple Hill, and starring Shailene Woodley, Ansel Elgort, and Nat Wolff. The screenplay was written by Scott Neustadter and Michael Weber, who went on to adapt Paper Towns for film. Fox 2000 and Temple Hill released Paper Towns in the summer of 2015, starring Nat Wolff, Cara Delevingne, Justice Smith, Austin Abrams, Halston Sage, and Jaz Sinclair. In the second half of 2015, John signed a first look production deal with Fox 2000.
In 2007, John 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 millions 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 600 million times.
John and Hank launched educational YouTube channel Crash Course in late 2011 with funding from YouTube’s original channel initiative. John, Hank, and a range of other hosts teach humanities and science courses to viewers, with multiple new series launching each year. World History, Literature, Economics, Physics, Biology, Chemistry, and Government are just some of the courses available to date. Crash Course has over 4.6 million subscribers and 420 million views. John and Hank are involved with a myriad of other video projects, including mental_floss video, The Art Assignment, SciShow, sexplanations, hankgames, and Healthcare Triage.
John’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. John grew up in Orlando, Florida before attending Indian Springs School and then Kenyon College. He currently lives in Indianapolis with his wife, children, and Fireball Wilson Roberts, the family’s west highland terrier.
The Biblioracle: 'Fault in our stars' author John Green's candor about his own mental illness is a gift
John Green attends the "Paper Towns" New York premiere in 2015 in New York City. (Jim Spellman / WireImage)
John WarnerContact Reporter
Chicago Tribune
For his last two novels, “The Fault in Our Stars” and “Turtles All the Way Down,” young adult author John Green has been working in the tradition of the “problem novel.”
Sometimes also known as the “social novel,” a problem novel takes an issue and seeks to use the narrative to bring the reader around to a particular stance on the issue.
Upton Sinclair wrote problem novels; John Steinbeck did too. “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” is a quintessential example.
Young adult problem novels tend to eschew the social for the personal, and the goal is not to convince so much as demystify. Consider Judy Blume’s “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret,” which tackled menstruation and was somehow scandalous at the time.
Though, as Laura Miller relates in her review of “Turtles All the Way Down,” Green is remixing the problem novel, adding in “confectionary romantic comedy and a tear-jerker and a detective story and a high school friendship drama” with the problem at the center of the drama: central character Aza Holmes’ struggles with obsessive compulsive disorder.
Miller and others have highly praised the novel for its rendering of what it’s like to live with OCD. Green’s prose simulates the “thought spirals” Aza experiences when she worries about microbes and infection; the result is claustrophobic and harrowing. It’s a very powerful novel, as was “The Fault in Our Stars,” which explored a relationship between two teens who meet in a cancer support group.
But I think there is another aspect of Green’s work we should be praising: As part of the publicity tour for the book, Green has been speaking clearly and frankly about his own mental health, including difficulties with anxiety, depression and OCD. He’s doing it in a way that I am convinced will help those who struggle with these conditions.
As part of the Vlogbrothers video channel Green runs with his brother Hank, Green has long been honest about his mental health, including explaining that the five-plus year gap between novels was at least partly due to managing his illness.
But in interviews with Terry Gross on “Fresh Air” and John Moe on his “The Hilarious World of Depression” podcast, Green goes considerably deeper to share the experience of living with mental health challenges.
Adults may not quite understand this, but to young people, Green is a rock star, and to have someone who is so treasured and admired so forthrightly admit his frailty must be a great gift to others who struggle similarly.
With Gross, as she probed the specific source of Green’s obsessions — Aza fears an infection known as c. difficile — Green demurred, politely, saying how he very deliberately wasn’t naming it for fear it may risk sending him into his own spiral. We learn that his problem is not something put behind him as he triumphantly peddles his book, but an ongoing part of who he is and how he lives.
To Moe, Green described his own erroneous thinking: that he would somehow be more himself if he stopped taking his medication — again, a struggle Aza shares. It’s something Green said he recognizes as foolish in hindsight, but also knows is a choice governed by his illness — and a learning experience.
Each year, more young people are diagnosed with anxiety, depression and other mental health disorders. Having someone like Green speaking so publicly and writing so well about these problems is a real gift.
John Warner is the author of “Tough Day for the Army.”
Twitter @biblioracle
Green, John: TURTLES ALL THE WAY DOWN
(Oct. 15, 2017):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Green, John TURTLES ALL THE WAY DOWN Dutton (Children's Fiction) $19.99 10, 10 ISBN: 978-0-525-55536-0
Nerdfighter Green's latest takes readers through Indianapolis and the human biome.
Aza Holmes doesn't feel like herself. But "if half the cells inside of you are not you, doesn't that challenge the whole notion of me as a singular pronoun...?" When a local billionaire--and the father of her childhood friend, a white boy named Davis--disappears, Aza (who seems to be white) and her BFF, Daisy Ramirez (who is cued as Latina), plot to find him and claim the reward, amid rumors of corruption and an underexplored side plot about semi-immortal reptiles. The story revolves around anxious Aza's dissociation from her body and life. Daisy chatters about Star Wars fan fiction (and calls Aza "Holmesy" ad nauseam), and Davis monologues about astronomy, while Aza obsesses over infection, the ever present, self-inflicted wound on her finger, and whether she's "just a deeply flawed line of reasoning." The thin but neatly constructed plot feels a bit like an excuse for Green to flex his philosophical muscles; teenagers questioning the mysteries of consciousness can identify with Aza, while others might wish that something--anything--really happens. The exploration of Aza's life-threatening compulsions will resonate deeply with some, titillate others, and possibly trigger those in between.
Aza would claim that opinions about this book are unfairly influenced by "the gut-brain informational cycle," which makes it hard to say what anyone else will think--but this is the new John Green; people will read this, or not, regardless of someone else's gut flora. (Fiction. 14-18)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Green, John: TURTLES ALL THE WAY DOWN." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Oct. 2017. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA509244155&it=r&asid=9a4355a13bb34527e1f2d2f1d645d50d. Accessed 2 Nov. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A509244155
There's more to John Green's 'Turtles' than youthful charm
Brian Truitt
(Oct. 11, 2017): Lifestyle: p05D.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/
Byline: Brian Truitt, USA TODAY
There's romance, friendship, melancholy and no shortage of quirky charm in Turtles All the Way Down, so John Green's latest young-adult effort falls squarely in his ultra-popular wheelhouse. Where the anticipated new novel differentiates itself, though, is as a thoughtful look at mental illness and a debilitating obsessive-compulsive disorder that doesn't ask but makes you feel the constant struggles of its main character.
Turtles (Dutton Books for Young Readers; 304 pp.; *** out of four), Green's first book since his 2012 phenomenon The Fault in Our Stars, might not be his best, but it definitely feels like his most personal and passionate project. It's part mystery, part love story and part coming-of-age journey, and it has lots of strife for a young woman who can't help feeling like the sidekick of her own existence. As 16-year-old Indianapolis youngster Aza Holmes figures, "I was beginning to learn that your life is a story told about you, not one that you tell."
The Holmes moniker isn't coincidental: She's a quiet high school Sherlock intrigued by the case of a local billionaire, Russell Pickett, who goes on the lam after charges of corruption surface. Aza and her "Best and Most Fearless Friend" Daisy Ramirez decide to investigate, since there's a hefty $100,000 reward at stake for info on finding him. It also leads to a reconnection with Pickett's son Davis, with whom Aza spent summer nights years ago staring up at the stars at "Sad Camp" for orphaned kids.
Aza's heart still hurts from the death of her father years ago -- she lovingly drives around his old clunker, named "Harold" -- though she's more crippled by what's going on with her brain. She's haunted by "thought spirals" and the irrational, obsessive fear she has of microbes and bacteria to the point where Aza can't even kiss a boy without it turning into a crushing, internal freakout.
These intrusions not only affect every fiber of her being, but, as she grapples with her problems over the course of the story, it also becomes clear that they've deeply infected her relationships with those around her.
While Turtles doesn't have the sharp tonal focus of Green books like the outstanding An Abundance of Katherines, it does boast clever one-liners ("Star Wars is the American religion"), insightful, witty dialogue and well-developed characters that are all hallmarks of the writer's enjoyable teen-dream prose. Daisy especially is strong, a spunky sort full of non sequiturs who writes online Chewbacca and Rey fan fiction yet has more complicated feelings in the real world when it comes to her BFF.
Green expertly communicates the confusion and pain of Aza's invasive thoughts, the way they spin out of control and their inescapable hold on her. But there's also a neat depth to the way Turtles explores the definition of happy endings, whether love is a tragedy or a failure, and a universal lesson for us all: "You work with what you have."
CAPTION(S):
photo Marina Waters
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Truitt, Brian. "There's more to John Green's 'Turtles' than youthful charm." USA Today, 11 Oct. 2017, p. 05D. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA509240122&it=r&asid=b12067e7409a8fec81021d716d46b71f. Accessed 2 Nov. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A509240122
In John Green’s ‘Turtles All the Way Down,’ a Teenager’s Mind Is at War With Itself
Books of The Times
By JENNIFER SENIOR OCT. 10, 2017
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Alessandra Montalto/The New York Times
John Green has written a new young adult novel, his first since “The Fault in Our Stars” (2012), and in some ways it is very much a John Green production.
It features a small cast of tenderhearted, manically articulate teenagers. (Green does Aaron Sorkin better than Aaron Sorkin does Aaron Sorkin.) They’re irrepressible nerds. (Among the festive topics they discuss: geography, astronomy, the hermeneutics of Star Wars.) As always, one of the girls is a tornado of enthusiasm and high drama, prone to announcements like, “I have a crisis,” when really it’s a fun crisis she’s having.
And there’s loss. Death, parting, existential questions about what it all means — they’re never far from Green’s mind. People die and disappear a lot in his books, and his adolescent characters spend a lot of time channeling their inner philosophers, trying to make sense of love and suffering. “The Fault in Our Stars,” which was simultaneously an implacable tragedy and a screwball comedy about two teenage cancer patients, was of a piece with everything Green has ever done.
There are few subjects more upsetting than young people with cancer. But Green’s latest book, “Turtles All the Way Down,” is somehow far darker, not so much because of the subject matter — though that’s dark too — but because of how he chooses to write about it. This novel is by far his most difficult to read. It’s also his most astonishing.
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At the heart of “Turtles All the Way Down” is Aza Holmes, age 16, who suffers from terrible anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Her case sits on the icier, distant end of the spectrum. It is not easily managed.
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John Green
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People tend to associate O.C.D. with repetitive behaviors, and that’s partly true in Aza’s case: She has a wound on her finger, self-inflicted, that she continually reopens in order to drain and re-sanitize.
But her repetitive, intrusive thoughts are her true torment. She’s obsessed with — and repulsed by — the ecosystem of bacteria that seethes inside her, and the bacteria that live without. She can’t stop worrying about the rumble in her gut, or the breeding microbes therein, or the possibility of contracting an infection involving clostridium difficile, or the prospect of sweating, or not being able to stop sweating, or touching someone who is sweating. She has to fight off the insistent, unignorable urge to put hand sanitizer in her mouth. Sometimes the urge wins.
We spend long stretches inside Aza’s head, listening to these swift and unsteady thoughts. The rational part of her, the one that sees a therapist and fitfully takes medication, tries to talk herself down. But her mind is in the throes of a civil war.
“Please let me go,” Aza tells her unwanted thoughts at a particularly helpless moment. “I’ll do anything. I’ll stand down.”
If Green were writing in his usual register, he’d interrupt Aza’s descents into these cognitive spirals — or “light-swallowing wormholes,” as she once calls them — with a bit of humor. But he seems to have made a decision: If Aza can’t find relief, neither can we.
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The first few chapters of “Turtles All the Way Down” are a little crude, a little awkward and a little slow to get off the ground — it’s as if Green needed extra time on the runway to overcome the weight of a success like “The Fault in Our Stars,” which became a touchstone for teenagers everywhere. (It has been rated 2,529,550 times on Goodreads, a number that continues to spin forward even as I type, like the odometer of a spaceship.) The premise: An Indianapolis billionaire has skipped town just before the police come to get him for bribery and fraud. A $100,000 reward is on offer to anyone who’s got the skinny on his whereabouts. Aza’s best friend, Daisy (the tornado), remembers that Aza knows this guy’s son. Wouldn’t he know something? And wouldn’t a hundred grand be grand?
Aza does know his son. She’d met him years ago at “Sad Camp,” a summer program for kids who’d lost one or both of their parents. Aza had lost her father; Davis, the billionaire’s son, lost his mother. Now it seems that both of his parents are gone.
So Aza reluctantly agrees to pay Davis a visit, and the novel — boom — begins in earnest. The two feel an ancient kinship, a bonding of broken souls. He’s terrified that his identity is inseparable from his money; she’s terrified that her identity is inseparable from her thoughts — aren’t people the sum of their thoughts? If they aren’t, what are they? “If you can’t pick what you do or think about,” she explains to him, “then maybe you aren’t really real, you know?”
A sweet, conventional love story begins. But it hits a bittersweet, unconventional dead end. Aza can’t kiss Davis without panicking. All those microbes. “I’m not gonna un-have this,” she miserably explains of her condition.
Still they bond. And Aza and Daisy try to solve the mystery of Davis’s father’s disappearance. At one point, Daisy gives Aza hell — doesn’t she see how her mental illness has made her self-absorbed? — and it’s awful. Then it isn’t. The friendships in Green’s novels are stirring and powerful. They’re one of the reasons we show up to read them.
“You are my favorite person,” Daisy tells Aza after they’ve reconciled. “I want to be buried next to you. We’ll have a shared tombstone.”
But the real question is: How does such a story end for Aza?
If an author has integrity, it should end plausibly. Green has integrity. He also has O.C.D. He’s tweeted about it; he’s discussed it on his famous video blog with his brother, Hank. Watch his entry from July 25 sometime.
I still wasn’t prepared for the ending of this novel. It’s so surprising and moving and true that I became completely unstrung, incapable of reading it to my husband without breaking down. One needn’t be suffering like Aza to identify with it. One need only be human. Everyone, at some point, knows what it’s like when the mind develops a mind of its own.
Follow Jennifer Senior on Twitter: @JenSeniorNY
Turtles All the Way Down
By John Green
286 pages. Dutton. $19.99
Turtles All the Way Down by John Green review – a new modern classic
Five years after The Fault in Our Stars, John Green has written another YA novel that will resonate with teenagers and comfort anxious young minds everywhere
John Green: a deep understanding of what it means to be a teenager. Photograph: Marina Waters
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Matt Haig
Tuesday 10 October 2017 07.30 BST
Last modified on Tuesday 10 October 2017 10.03 BST
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ollowing the gargantuan success of John Green’s 2012 YA novel The Fault in Our Stars, Turtles All the Way Down is a publishing mega-event. It’s also a book some might find easy to not like. It is sentimental, occasionally cliched and ticks so many teen fiction boxes you sometimes wonder if the author has a form beside him (troubled teen narrator – check; love interest – check; adults who don’t understand – check; quirky best friend - check; scene where boy points out stars to girl – check; topical issue – check). I wondered at first if I wouldn’t like it, but, spoiler alert, I rather did.
The story, narrated by a troubled Indianapolis teenager, Aza Holmes, begins as a mystery. Along with her mildly unscrupulous best friend Daisy, Aza decides to search for billionaire Russell Pickett, who has gone missing under a cloud of fraud and bribery accusations, in the hope of pocketing the $100,000 reward money.
Early into their search, Aza begins to fall for Russell’s son Davis, who, despite his excessive privileges (including a mansion complete with a cinema) is also troubled: still mourning his mother, who died nine years ago, he now has to deal with his father’s disappearance, and the knowledge that if his dad has died he has left his fortune to his pet reptile (a tuatara, to be precise).
There are many places in the first half where it feels as though you are reading a straightforward, even conventional mystery: perhaps a teen Grisham. The missing eccentric billionaire. The murky river. The mansion full of potential secrets. The trails and dead ends. You begin to expect, and predict, major plot twists.
But it becomes clear that Green’s main focus is not the mystery – it’s the teenage friendships and love interests and, maybe most of all, Aza’s mental health. Green’s likeable, introverted, neurotic narrator suffers with invasive thoughts that centre around a fear of bacteria and infection. She keeps reopening a wound in a finger to “drain it” of infection. Aza and Daisy inhabit a recognisably teenage world of crushes and double dates, of late night texting and Star Wars fan fiction and conversations about unsolicited dick pics. And like the best of young adult fiction, the book has a deep understanding of what it means to be a teenager. There is a twist, but not a thrillerish one: a twist in the telling, not of what’s told.
Children's books Guardian children's books podcast: John Green on The Fault In Our Stars
John Green reads aloud The Fault In Our Stars and answers questions from Guardian teenage readers about the book and his life and writing. This love story for teens about young cancer sufferers does contain some strong language
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This is by no means a perfect novel. The mystery and love story and mental health aspects often feel compartmentalised and it is 50 pages too long. Aza can be a repetitive narrator: this may be appropriate for someone who suffers repetitive thoughts, but can make the reading experience frustrating. Some of the recurring mental illness metaphors couldn’t have been hammered harder by Thor himself; it feels as though the illness-as-spiral idea occurs at least once a chapter, and there are more stargazy sentimental Big Moments than at a Coldplay concert. But all this is overridden by the fact that where the author is good, he is very, very good.
In short, this novel confirms John Green as a great chronicler of teenage life. He captures the insecurities of youth in the way Judy Blume used to, and he ranks alongside such American masters of teen conversation as SE Hinton and John Hughes. That’s to say, as with the dialogue in The Breakfast Club or The Outsiders, it may not be how young people actually speak, but it is how they might wish to speak – which is possibly more important. Though his characters are troubled and insecure, they articulate themselves with lucidity and wit and geeky self-awareness; conversations zip back and forth like a kind of verbal air hockey.
Even Aza’s self-confessed lack of articulation is well articulated by her to the reader. Her obsessions mean there is a lot of germ knowledge – “Around eighty million microbes are exchanged per kiss”, and so on. There is a slight sense that Green wants to show he knows more than his narrator, here and there, which can come across as authorsplaining. However, Aza herself is continually clear and wise on the subject of her predicament: “True terror isn’t being scared; it’s having no choice in the matter.” The novel drips with high and pop cultural references, from The Tempest to Iron Man, via James Joyce and Jupiter Ascending. Green is very good at the inbetween nature of being a teen – existing between education and recreation, childhood and adulthood, online and “IRL”.
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Green’s characters can be deliberately annoying – such as Daisy, Aza’s overbearing friend – yet you ultimately warm to them as believable, redeemable human beings. The ever-strengthening thought-whirlpools of Aza’s mental illness are well handled, and feel unflinchingly raw and true (according to the author, the novel marks his first attempt to write directly about the kind of mental illness that has affected him since childhood).
It often dwells in cliche, but only as pop songs and epic poems do, mining the universal to create something that speaks to the familiar rhythms of the heart. At one point Aza thinks about how the string from one musical instrument can cause the string of another to vibrate, if it’s the same note. That’s what this novel does. It will pluck the strings of those in tune with it. It will resonate with, and comfort, anxious young minds everywhere. It might just be a new modern classic.
• Matt Haig’s How to Stop Time is published by Canongate.
• Turtles All the Way Down is published by Puffin. To order a copy for £12.74 (RRP £14.99) go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99.
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John Green’s new book is not a quirky sad romance. It’s an existential teenage scream.
Updated by Constance Grady@constancegrady Oct 11, 2017, 9:18am EDT
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John Green is popularly perceived as “the sad teen book guy.” He writes books about quirky sad teenagers who fall in love and then die, goes the general pop culture osmosis understanding in a post-The Fault in Our Stars world, and then the teenagers who read the books get sad too, and it’s all extremely adolescent and self-indulgent.
What can get lost in that image, though, is the fact that Green is a genuinely good writer for teens. He hooks himself into the questions that consume adolescence — Who am I? What is my purpose? Am I a disgusting monster, or the single most important being in the universe? — and worries through them with the kind of single-minded intensity that would do a teenager proud.
It’s true that Green’s books are about teenagers, that they’re often sad, and that they can be self-indulgent — but they’re self-indulgent in their sadness in the way that teenagers are self-indulgent about their own adolescent angst: innocently, as if they are unaware there could be another way to feel.
In his new book Turtles All the Way Down, out this Tuesday, Green turns his single-minded intensity to the question of what it is like to be a teenager struggling with an anxiety disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder. The result is deeply claustrophobic and resolutely unromanticized: Green’s signature whimsy pops up from time to time in his characters’ conversations, but his depiction of mental illness focuses on the sheer monotonous grind of it. It’s less a sweet love ballad than it is a scream.
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The power of Turtles All the Way Down lies in its main character’s inner monologue
Aza is 16 years old, and she is obsessed with a cut on her finger. She got into the habit of slicing open the skin on her middle finger with her thumbnail as a way of reminding herself that she is real and she exists, and she has done it so often that now she has a callus there, which she opens and reopens throughout the day.
An open wound, she knows, can get infected. It’s important that she sanitize the cut. It’s important that she change the bandage regularly. It’s important that she drain the wound. Was that pus or sweat that came out last time? She should drain it again. If she doesn’t, she’ll get infected with microbes.
But she’s already infected with microbes. Her body is teeming with bacteria — in her gut, in her sweat — and they are always there, making up her body. And they can affect her thoughts. And if her thoughts are affected by bacteria, then are they really hers? And if her thoughts aren’t hers, who is she? Does she have a self? Is she even real?
Which brings her back to the beginning of the cycle, so she opens up the cut again.
Aza’s obsessive inner monologue is the meat of Turtles All the Way Down. The story is told in a tight first-person perspective — or it is until Aza’s intrusive thoughts become so overwhelming that she splits into other perspectives — so that the reader is always trapped inside Aza’s head, where she’s unable to redirect her thoughts away from the same destructive cycle. When she’s kissing the quirky-John-Green-hero boy she likes, she’s obsessed with the idea that the microbes on his tongue are infecting her body. When she’s trying to hang out with her best friend, she keeps getting distracted by the idea that she needs to clean the cut on her hand again.
Aza’s anxiety is clearly a personal story for Green, who’s struggled with anxiety for most of his life. After the runaway success of The Fault in Our Stars and the movie it became, he found it so hard to write a follow-up that he went off his medication and fell into an anxiety spiral. (Worry not for the impressionable youths; one of the things Aza learns over the course of Turtles All the Way Down is that taking your medication can help you.) So Aza’s story accordingly feels real, and exhausting, and authentic. She does not get all the way better. The quirky cute boy does not save her. Her mental illness is not romantic; it is scary and boring, and sometimes it annoys her friends. What’s important is that she manages to make her way through life regardless.
The whole thing is elevated by Green’s knack for an observation that nails a universal truth of high school. One boy, says Aza’s friend, is “in that vast boy middle,” where 99 percent of boys live, where “if you could dress and hygiene them properly, and make them stand up straight and listen to you and not be dumbasses, they’d be totally acceptable.” Aza and her friend spend all their after-school time at an Applebee’s, eating their way through a coupon book, exactly the way teenagers in a crappy midsize city do with limited funds and limited free time.
Green’s observations do occasionally veer off into the kind of faux profundity that his detractors like to make fun of. Aza and her love interest spend a lot of time looking at the stars and having that conversation about how when you’re looking at the night sky you’re actually looking into the past that fictional teenagers have been having for at least 70 years or so; there’s a lot of quoting of angsty teen-penned poetry (“You don’t know a father’s weight / Until it’s lifted”).
But those moments aren’t so much cringe-inducing as they are endearing: They are straight from the earnest teenage heart of Turtles All the Way Down, which is feeling so very many things. And if it’s a little myopic in its focus — well, isn’t that another one of the universal bugs of adolescence?