Book Descriptions
for The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
From Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC)
Diagnosed with stage IV thyroid cancer when she was thirteen, Hazel rallied against the odds, although she’s still terminally ill. Hazel meets Gus, who had a leg amputated due to osteosarcoma but is currently cancer-free, at a support group for teens with cancer. They share a smart, sassy, darkly humorous outlook on the group itself, and life with cancer. Hazel’s favorite book is a novel about Anna, a teen with cancer. She appreciates it for its honesty but obsesses over the way it ends, mid-sentence. The author, who lives in the Netherlands, has never responded to her letters asking what happened to Anna and the other characters, and so Gus uses his request from a foundation granting wishes for kids with cancer to take Hazel to Amsterdam to meet him. That meeting is a dismal disappointment. But while there, Hazel and Gus’s relationship advances from friendship to love, and Gus reveals that his cancer has returned. Hazel and Gus are two exceptionally articulate teens, but if author John Green’s adolescent characters aren’t wholly realistic, their struggles are authentic, from Hazel’s fears about how her parents will deal with her eventual death to Gus’s unromanticized decline, which ends with him dying. Hazel and Gus’s dialogue is witty and entertaining—it’s enjoyable spending time with them—but also revealing of the issues they and their families are grappling with. The parents of both teens are well-developed secondary characters, while a visit to the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam offers a richly resonant connection to another teen falling in love and fighting to survive. (Age 12 and older)
CCBC Choices 2013. © Cooperative Children's Book Center, Univ. of Wisconsin - Madison, 2013. Used with permission.
From the Publisher
Now a Major Motion Picture
TODAY Book Club pick
TIME magazine’s #1 Fiction Book of 2012
"The greatest romance story of this decade." —Entertainment Weekly
-Millions of copies sold-
#1 New York Times Bestseller
#1 Wall Street Journal Bestseller
#1 USA Today Bestseller
#1 International Bestseller
#1 Indie Bestseller
Despite the tumor-shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few years, Hazel has never been anything but terminal, her final chapter inscribed upon diagnosis. But when a gorgeous plot twist named Augustus Waters suddenly appears at Cancer Kid Support Group, Hazel’s story is about to be completely rewritten.
Insightful, bold, irreverent, and raw, The Fault in Our Stars is award-winning-author John Green’s most ambitious and heartbreaking work yet, brilliantly exploring the funny, thrilling, and tragic business of being alive and in love.
TODAY Book Club pick
TIME magazine’s #1 Fiction Book of 2012
"The greatest romance story of this decade." —Entertainment Weekly
-Millions of copies sold-
#1 New York Times Bestseller
#1 Wall Street Journal Bestseller
#1 USA Today Bestseller
#1 International Bestseller
#1 Indie Bestseller
Despite the tumor-shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few years, Hazel has never been anything but terminal, her final chapter inscribed upon diagnosis. But when a gorgeous plot twist named Augustus Waters suddenly appears at Cancer Kid Support Group, Hazel’s story is about to be completely rewritten.
Insightful, bold, irreverent, and raw, The Fault in Our Stars is award-winning-author John Green’s most ambitious and heartbreaking work yet, brilliantly exploring the funny, thrilling, and tragic business of being alive and in love.
Publisher description retrieved from Google Books.