“Green writes books for young adults, but his voice is so compulsively readable that it defies categorization. The Fault in Our Stars proves that the hype surrounding Green is not overblown.” -NPR
The rapidity of his speech. His unabashed passion for...well, everything. The clear-sighted way he sees teenagers, and the empathy and love with which he writes about them is unparalleled. Now, you might think a high school teacher is bitter about teens and cynical about those years. Quite the contrary. I love young people. I love their black and white way of seeing the world, their questions, their daily attempts to find their own path and voice, their enthusiasm, and their idealism. John Green knows all of this, and just like Hazel Grace says about Peter Van Houten, I would read his shopping lists. Hemingway once advised: "Write the truest sentence you know." So many sentences from his novels will resonate with you long after you finish reading. Like Hemingway, his style is spare, clean, and honest. He does not insult his audience by talking down to them. His depiction of adolescence is truthful and joyful without being sentimental. There are varying degrees of Holden Caufield in every teenager, and John Green may be one of the few people Holden would not accuse of being a phony. I adore his novels enough to read them more than once, which is a rarer thing than you might imagine.
Moreover, my daughters do as well. At a time in their lives when they are pulling away from me, I delight in the things we still share. Cherished are the T.V. shows or movies equally loved by my pre-teen daughters and me. Even more cherished are the books. Their obsessive love of reading is something to feed and fuel. I may feel guilty when I buy them donuts on a Saturday morning, or spend too much money at Forever 21, but I never feel any guilt about spending fifty dollars on John Green books for them. They are like a literary Flinstones vitamin for me, and a midnight ice cream sundae for them. Delicious, emotionally satisfying, and good for them. For all of us.
You should start with The Fault in Our Stars for many reasons. It's his best novel. You will begin and then not be able to stop reading until the last page. You will then want to start over again because the characters are just that memorable, the ideas just that thought-provoking. If you are a teenager, you will start looking for your own Augustus Waters or Hazel Grace Lancaster. Will the novel break your heart and leave you cursing the writer who has left you in pieces on the floor with just his words? Yes. Yes, it will, which is why you must read it. Furthermore, the movie comes out in less than a month. Do not insult such a life-changing novel by seeing the movie first. It's shameful.Green's novels do not need to be read in any particular order, so after TFIOS read anything this man has written. He does not disappoint.
