Looking For Alaska - Controversy

Controversy

The book has been challenged for content dealing with sexually explicit situations. Two teachers at Depew High School near Buffalo, New York, used the book for eleventh grade instruction. A letter was sent to parents advising the book contained controversial content. An alternate reading selection was available for those opting out, and a small percentage of parents chose this option. Nevertheless, the book was challenged on the grounds that it is "pornographic" and "disgusting". One parent even went as far as refusing to read the book himself, reportedly saying that "One does not need to have cancer to diagnose cancer". The book was ultimately retained by the school board after the author explained himself on his vlog.

In March 2012, The Knoxville Journal in Knoxville, Tennessee, reported that a parent of a 15-year-old Karns High School student objected to the book's placement on the Honors and Advanced Placement class required reading list for Knox County High Schools on the grounds that its sex scene and its use of profanity rendered it pornography.

The main characters in the story are teenagers who also drink, smoke and use explicit language. The author has publicly defended his work. "Some people say, 'You wrote a dirty, dirty book.' But there are very old-fashioned values and even a lot of religion in it," Green said. "There are some adults who think that the only kind of ethics that matter are sexual ethics. So they miss everything else that is going on in the book." Green also said, "The book has never been marketed to 12-year-olds. Never. It is packaged like an adult book; it doesn't even say it's published by a kids' book imprint on the cover, and it's never shelved in the children's section of bookstores."

Green attended Indian Springs School, a boarding and day school outside of Birmingham, Alabama. During the time he was a student there, a student died under circumstances similar to one of the characters in the novel.

According to John Green himself at a book talk in Rivermont Collegiate on October 19, 2006, he got the idea of Takumi's "fox hat" from a Filipino friend who wore a similar hat while playing pranks at Indian Springs School. From the same book talk, Green also stated that the "possessed" swan in Culver Creek came from his student life at Indian Springs School as well, where there was also a swan of similar nature on the campus. The two pranks that occur in the book are similar to pranks that Green pulled at his high school. Green has also stated, while giving a talk at Indian Springs, that several of Culver Creek's teachers are direct caricatures of multiple faculty members at Indian Springs.