An Abundance of Katherines ~ John Green

Title: An Abundance of Katherines
Author: John Green
Publisher: Dutton Juvenile, 256 pages.
Copyright: 2006


Summary: 
Plot: After being dumped nineteen times by girls named "Katherine", ex-child prodigy, Colin Singleton (what irony!) conspires to think of a Theorem of Underlying Katherine Predictability and solve the great mystery that is relationships.
Major Characters: Collin Singleton, Hassan, Lindsey Lee Wells
Major Subjects: Humor


School Library Journal Review:
Grade 9 Up–This novel is not as issue-oriented as Greens Looking for Alaska (Dutton, 2005), though it does challenge readers with its nod to postmodern structure. Right after intellectual child-prodigy Colin Singleton graduates from high school, his girlfriend (who, like the 18 young women and girls whom he claimed as girlfriends over the years, is named Katherine) breaks up with him and sends him into a total funk. His best friend, Hassan, determines that he can only be cured with a road trip. After some rather aimless driving, the two find themselves in Gutshot, TN, where locals persuade them to stay. There, Colin spends his spare time working on a mathematical theorem of love, hypothesizing that romantic relationships can be graphed and predicted. The narrative is self-consciously dorky, peppered with anagrams, trivia, and foreign-language bons mots and interrupted by footnotes that explain, translate, and expound upon the text in the form of asides. It is this type of mannered nerdiness that has the potential to both win over and alienate readers. As usual, Greens primary and secondary characters are given descriptive attention and are fully and humorously realized. While enjoyable, witty, and even charming, a book with an appendix that describes how the mathematical functions in the novel can be created and graphed is not for everybody. The readers who do embrace this book, however, will do so wholeheartedly.–Amy S. Pattee, Simmons College, Boston 


Review: 
Picture this: You used to be a childhood prodigy. Member of an academic game team. You excelled in school. You were special. You met a girl named Katherine and the two of you started dating. 

Then she dumps you. 

Then eighteen more girls named Katherine dump you. 

Suddenly, you're a teenager with no claim to fame except for your former status as a prodigy. No new ideas. No girl. No plans for the summer excepting wasting away in your room and moping. 

This is not your life. But it is Colin Singleton's life immediately after his graduation from high school. Colin is a new high school graduate, a soon-to-be-ex child prodigy, and this theorem, the theorem that could potentially make him a genius, is the problem he is facing.

You see, Colin has a problem. Colin falls in love very easily.  He tries to make himself a genius by coming up with the Theorem of Underlying Katherine Predictability, to not only make himself known for something, but to also figure out why all nineteen Katherines have dumped him.

As a distraction, Colin and his best friend Hassan set out on a road trip to nowhere, in The Hearse (Colin's car). Seeing a sign for the grave of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the boys head to Gutshot, Tennessee; a small town, where they happen upon Lindsey Lee Wells, a girl who is nothing like any Katherine has been for Colin. Their road trip stops in Gutshot, Tennessee. But the adventures don't. Hired by a local bigwig to compile an oral history of Gutshot, Colin and Hassan find themselves staying with Hollis and her daughter, Lindsey. It is in Gutshot that Colin finally has what he has always wanted, a truly original idea. Thus, Colin begins to create a theorem of love in his attempt to understand his own rocky love life. 

The hook of An Abundance of Katherines is an intriguing one. Looking at the cover, it'd be easy to assume this was a novel about cloning. Instead, it's a coming-of-age story for Colin and his best friend, Hassan. Colin's desparation to prove himself--not only as a genius but also to the Katherine XIX (as she's known in the novel)--is a fascinating journey. The novel does hit some predictable markers for a young adult story, but John Green hits them with such refreshing honesty and nicely done characters that you won't really mind that much. 


Reading Level: Beginner to Intermediate
Notes about Audience: Recommended for ages 14 and up. 

 Other books by John Green:

http://johngreenbooks.com/

You might also enjoy:

Like Nothing but the Truth by Justina Chen Headley

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Looking for Alaska ~ John Green

Title: Looking for Alaska 
Author: John Green 

Publisher: Dutton Books, 160 pages 
Copyright: 2005 

Summary: 
Plot: Sixteen year old Miles moves from Florida to Alabama to attend boarding school. This is a coming of age story about Miles's adventures and misadventures at Culver Creek Academy.
Major Characters: Miles "Pudge" Halter, Alaska Young, Chip "Colonel" Martin 
Major Subjects: Coming-of-Age, Romance, Boarding School 

School Library Journal Review: 
Gr 9 Up: From the very first page, tension fills John Green's Michael L. Printz Award-winning novel (Dutton, 2005). Miles Halter, 16, is afraid that nobody will show up at his party because he doesn't have many friends. He loves to read biographies and discover the last words attributed to famous people. He's particularly intrigued with the dying words of poet Francois Rabelais: "I go to seek a great perhaps." Miles is leaving his loving Florida home for the "great perhaps" of the same Alabama boarding school attended by his father. Ominous chapter headings (40 days before, 10 days after) reveal that something tragic may happen. At school, Miles is accepted by a brainy group of pranksters led by his roommate and Alaska Young, a smart and sexy feminist. The teen becomes captivated by his new friends who spend as much energy on sex, smoking, drinking, and cutting-up as they do on reading, learning, and searching for life's meaning. As the school year progresses, Miles's crush on Alaska intensifies, even after it becomes evident that her troubled past sometimes causes her to be self-destructive. This novel is about real kids dealing with the pressures of growing up and feeling indestructible. Listeners will be riveted as the friends band together to deal with the catastrophic events that plague their junior year, and rejoice at their triumphs. Jeff Woodman clearly delineates the voices for each character in an age-appropriate, smart-alecky manner, injecting great emotion while managing not to be overly sentimental. This story belongs in all collections for older young adults, especially those who like Chris Crutcher, David Klass, and Terry Trueman. 

Review: 
This is a book about the big things that happen to us: love, loss, grief, forgiveness. 

Looking for Alaska is a Printz Award Winner, so I was expecting something with a little more "ummph" to it, but I didn't find that in this book. It's a very well-written novel, but there's no punch; instead, the novel seems to drag on and on and on and on and on. 

Once Miles arrives at Culver Creek boarding school in Alabama, he is taken under the wing of his roommate Chip, otherwise known as the Colonel, a dirt-poor genius on a scholarship who spends his spare time coming up with extravagant plans to bring down the uber-rich preppies of their school. Chip quickly creates a fitting nickname for scrawny Miles, Pudge. 

Miles, or Pudge, meets kids his age that he would never imagine being friends with back at home. His roommate, the Colonel; Takumi, the Japanese whizz kid; Lara, the shy, but beautiful Romanian, and the crazy wild child he can’t keep his mind off of, Alaska. Being the leader of the group, Alaska is an outgoing, flirty, fly-by-the-seat-of-her-pants girl who doesn’t go by the rules. All three characters are presented as if they are wise beyond their years, but high school drama, intensified by boarding school highs and lows, transforms them bad-ass. As the novel progresses, Miles’s feelings for Alaska become stronger and stronger, but Jake, her boyfriend, is the only thing holding Miles back from expressing how he feels. 

The novel is divided into two sections, "Before" and "After", so readers can expect a major event to happen in the second section. The event shakes up Miles, Chip, and the entire school. 

It's hard to see this book as young adult fiction because it reads like Miles is looking back on it years later. It is written in first person past tense and the voice of Miles is so mature, so self-aware that it is hard to believe a sixteen year-old telling the tale of his own coming of age with such effortless aplomb. 

Green spends more time on Miles’s inner spiritual life using his world religions class as a foil for what is happening to him. Miles’s monologues can be dense and philosophical and, again, feel too sophisticated for a boy who counts layers of clothing and drinks milk and vodka. (On the other hand, many YA novels have a character whose actions on the outside contradict their mature and thoughtful internal feelings.) His narrative is jumping with self-deprecating humor and teenage struggle to be truthful and to still maintain the facade of coolness that they project. 

Favorite Lines: "It's not because I want to make out with her." Hold on." He grabbed a pencil and scrawled excitedly at the paper as if he'd just made a mathematical breakthrough and then looked back up at me. "I just did some calculations, and I've been able to determine that you're full of shit" 

Reading Level: Intermediate

Notes about Audience: Recommended for readers in high school, ages 15 and up. 

Other books by John Green:

http://johngreenbooks.com/

You might also enjoy:

King Dork by Frank Portman

Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

Absolute Brightness by James Lecesne

Spud by John Van de Ruit