Banned Books’ Explicit Content and Its Impact on Young Adult Readers: An Examination of 'Looking for Alaska' M Callaway College

Banned and challenged books and their explicit content for adolescents have always been a controversial topic of debate among education and relating communities in which certain texts may be challenged or banned due to their content being “unsuitable” for a youth audience. Looking for Alaska (2005) by John Green describes the life of young adult, Miles Halter, who attends a boarding school where he goes to seek a “Great Perhaps.” Broken up into two sections, the Before section follows Miles and his friends Chip (“The Colonel”) Martin, Takumi Hikohito, and Alaska Young as they grow very close as the narrative leads to Alaska’s death at the end of this section. In the After section of Green’s novel, Miles and his friends investigate Alaska’s death while Miles ponders the meaning of his life. Green’s novel was the fourth-most banned book according to the American Library Association’s (AMA) Office for Intellectual Freedom between 2010 and 2019 for some reasons including offensive language, sexually explicit content, and inclusions of drugs, alcohol, and smoking. The young adult text, Looking for Alaska (2005), which has been challenged due to its “sexually explicit content,” subverts society’s traditional notion of adolescence...