Module 4: Paper Towns

Summary. Quentin (Q.) and Margo Roth Spiegelman have been friends since they were two years old. When they were nine, they shared a traumatic event. Now they are high school seniors. It's almost the end of the last year before they go off to college and never see each other again. And then comes the night when Margo slips into Q's room and requires his presence for a night of vandalism and revenge. Quentin is dubious, then enthusiastic, then ecstatic. But the next morning at school -- Margo is gone. Where is she? Quentin begins a journey of enquiry into her life, her aspirations, trying to imagine where she has gone. The journey takes him into Walt Whitman's poetry, abandoned buildings, strange missing towns, and the big questions of life.

Citation. Green, John. Paper Towns. New York: Dutton. 2008.

My Impressions. Green's writing style is, as usual, fully of snappy dialogue and clever situations. His characters are generally likeable, the humor is well-written. The probing questions Quentin asks and ponders are worth consideration. However, I must say that Green's morals and worldview bother me personally. Teens are generally unsupervised by adults. Adults are impotent and disconnected overall. Teens frequently defy authority with very little in terms of consequences, either personal or legal. His tales often end in a way that doesn't give the reader much hope that anything will get better within the difficult situations that have been addressed. Definitely realistic, but perhaps too much so for my taste.

Library Uses. I would see this book as something that a group could discuss, dissect, and work with over an extended set of sessions (perhaps 3-4 sessions of an hour or so).

Awards. 2009 Edgar Award for best Young Adult novel

Reviews.*Booklist Starred Review* Quentin or Q. as everyone calls him has known his neighbor, the fabulous Margo Roth Spiegelman, since they were two. Or has he? Q. can't help but wonder, when, a month before high-school graduation, she vanishes. At first he worries that she might have committed suicide, but then he begins discovering clues that seem to have been left for him, which might reveal Margo's whereabouts. Yet the more he and his pals learn, the more Q. realizes he doesn't know and the more he comes to understand that the real mystery is not Margo's fate but Margo herself enigmatic, mysterious, and so very alluring. Yes, there are echoes of Green's award-winning Looking for Alaska (2006): a lovely, eccentric girl; a mystery that begs to be solved by clever, quirky teens; and telling quotations (from The Leaves of Grass, this time) beautifully integrated into the plot. Yet, if anything, the thematic stakes are higher here, as Green ponders the interconnectedness of imagination and perception, of mirrors and windows, of illusion and reality. That he brings it off is testimony to the fact that he is not only clever and wonderfully witty but also deeply thoughtful and insightful. In addition, he's a superb stylist, with a voice perfectly matched to his amusing, illuminating material.--Cart, Michael Copyright 2008 Booklist

(School Library Journal) Gr 9 Up-Quentin Jacobsen, 17, has been in love with his next-door neighbor, Margo Roth Spiegelman, for his entire life. A leader at their Central Florida high school, she has carefully cultivated her badass image. Quentin is one of the smart kids. His parents are therapists and he is, above all things, "goddamned well adjusted." He takes a rare risk when Margo appears at his window in the middle of the night. They drive around righting wrongs via her brilliant, elaborate pranks. Then she runs away (again). He slowly uncovers the depth of her unhappiness and the vast differences between the real and imagined Margo. Florida's heat and homogeneity as depicted here are vivid and awful. Green's prose is astounding-from hilarious, hyperintellectual trash talk and shtick, to complex philosophizing, to devastating observation and truths. He nails it-exactly how a thing feels, looks, affects-page after page. The mystery of Margo-her disappearance and her personhood-is fascinating, cleverly constructed, and profoundly moving. Green builds tension through both the twists of the active plot and the gravitas of the subject. He skirts the stock coming-of-age character arc-Quentin's eventual bravery is not the revelation. Instead, the teen thinks deeper and harder-about the beautiful and terrifying ways we can and cannot know those we love. Less-sophisticated readers may get lost in Quentin's copious transcendental ruminations-give Paper Towns to your sharpest teens.-Johanna Lewis, New York Public Library Copyright 2008 Reed Business Information.