John Green, writer, vlogger, nerdfighter extrordinaire

John Green is one of those writers who feels like a friend.  He writes YA Lit, and has some amazing YouTube videos which give his readers and fans some insight into his personality - much more so than the writers of my youth did.

I remember feeling like authors were something akin to Angels - you couldn't see or talk to them, but you knew they were "out there somewhere" doing good in your life.  It's probably good that one of my favorite authors, Roald Dahl, did not have a YouTube account, because since his death I've read some unpleasant things about him, which I hope are exaggerations, or better yet - simply not true.

However, John Green has an energy and enthusiasm that is positively catchy.  His Crash Course videos are delivered at break-neck speed, and quite often my students report that they were forced to "rewind" and watch them several times over.  I say Good!  Repetition is not the devil it has been made out to be.

The book of Green's that impacted me first was Looking for Alaska.  The voices and ideas in the story are so teen-aged, that I looked to see if the writer was indeed a teenager himself.  He was not.  Young, yes, but no teen.  And yet, he remembers.  He remembers extremely well -- and that is evident in his other novels as well, particularly in The Fault in Our Stars. 

I'm not going to talk about his books.  Plenty of other bloggers have done that already, and you can find tons of questions and information on John's Tumbler account, and in many other places.  Just Google him.  And before you do  - check out his books, and read them for yourself. You'll thank me later.

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