John Green Books In Order

Publication Order of Will Grayson, Will Grayson Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Short Story Collections

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Publication Order of Anthologies

About John Green:

John Green is a best selling author of Young Adult fictions, educator and a Youtube vlogger whos original life plan was to become an Episcopalian minister. Born on August 24, 1977, in Indianapolis, his family moved when he was three weeks old to Orlando, Florida. He went to Indian Springs Boarding School near Birmingham and in 2002, went on to graduate with a double major in English and Religious studies from Kenyon College. Green’s literary influences were Gary Paulsen’s novel Hatchet, Little Women by Louisa May Alcott and Ann Martin’s Babysitters Club books which are aimed at girls. Later in life he began to fall in love with the works of writers such as Salinger, Toni Morrison, Wallace and Kurt Vonnegut, Lorrie Moore and David Foster, whom he says are brilliant. Australian young adult writer, Markus Zusak is one of his favorites saying that he is intimidatingly brilliant.

Enrolling at the University of Chicago Divinity School after college he spent the next 5 months as a chaplain in a children’s hospital. While working at the hospital Green was inspired by the suffering of the children around him to write The Fault in Our Stars.He worked for Booklist in Chicago as a production editor for several years. It was while he was in this job that he wrote Looking for Alaska, which was published in 2005, winning the Michael L Printz Award. As well as the award it was in the American Library Associations Top 10 Best Book For Young Adults. Looking for Alaska reached the New York Times best seller list in 2012. Other accolades for John Green included, The Fault in Our Stars, winning Teen Book of the year at the Children’s Choice Book Awards and taking out the Indiana National Author Award.

Looking for Alaska

Miles “Pudge” Halter, has a penchant for learning famous last words and is fed up with his boring life in Florida gets sent to an Alabama boarding school. On his arrival he meets his roommate, Chip, and Alaska Young, a wildly gorgeous girl who is to become the object of his desires. Bonding over rule breaking, study and pranks they suddenly have to deal with and make sense with a tragedy that occurs. Green has included a lot of controversial points in this book, drugs, sex, and drinking to name a few, but these are not in any way gratuitous. It is used to define the characters and develop the them of this award winning book and is being used in many high schools as a way of both adults and young adults discuss and deal with topics that can be sometimes difficult.

An Abundance of Katherines

Fresh from graduating high school, Colin Singleton is unique. He was a child prodigy, knows at least eighteen languages and has dated and dumped by nineteen Katherines! Exactly the opposite of Colin is Hassan, his best friend an outspoken, unmotivated Judge Judy lover. After persuading Colin to go on a road trip to get over his latest dumping, stop in Tennessee at the grave of Franz Ferdinand. Both boys begin to truly live their lives at this point and the adventure begins.

It is a quirky take on the coming of age genre. John Green makes this feel fresh and new and being sprinkled with random, sometimes bizarre, facts and footnotes make this novel is an amusing look at a confusing time in a young persons life.

All of Green’s novels involve the young protagonists such as Quentin Jacobsen an inquisitive youth from the novel Paper Towns or Will Grayson, the duo from the novel of the same name. John Green has obviously done his research on all of his characters and and each of them are unique.

John Green and his brother Hank are known for deciding in 2007, to cease textual communication and began to communicate through blogging. From this, nerdfighters, a community of people fighting for intellectualism was born. This group of individuals have raised in the hundreds and thousands of dollars to fight poverty in the developing world and in May 2010, planted trees around the world to mark Hank’s 30th birthday. The brothers still upload a couple of videos each which to vlogbrothers, their YouTube channel which has become on of the most popular channels in history with over 300 million views.

Not stopping there, the brothers also have another YouTube channel, Crash Course, where educational videos with the subject matter being chemistry, history and literature.

The other pet project of John Green is Vidcon. It is the largest conference worldwide which is dedicated to the online video medium. The first ever VidCon event was Jult 2010 in Los Angeles. The tickets were sold out the day before the event and 1400 people showed up. The second event was in July 2011 and sold out more than two months in advance and had 2500 people attend. In June 2012 VidCon was held at the Anaheim convention Center which was significantly larger to make room for the 7000 people that attended. This is an industry conference and a party all mixed in one. The Green brothers believe that networking is best done without the stuffed shirts and the cold conference room and should be done while dancing to some decent rock music.

Green believes that all writing is political and thinks the challenge is to write in a way that isn’t simplistic. In the Will Grayson it is topical of LGBTQ characters and ultimately argues the point of weather LGBTQ individuals should have the equal rights and protection under law.Interestingly enough, John was not the kind of student to do any work out of class but spent his free time reading and writing. When he reached college he didn’t write outside of class at all until his senior year when he wrote a 30,000 word story of a minister, just having been freshly ordained going home to officiate at a wedding.

His books are sophisticated yet understandable, clear and concise using just the right amount of bad language and thoughts that appeal to the young adult reader.

John Green currently lives with his wife Sarah, and kids Henry, Alice and Fireball Wilson Roberts (his dog) in Indianapolis, Indiana.

2 Responses to “John Green”

1. Don: 2 years ago

   Just read Double Deal, great read. Was a little disappointed with ending, seems to be left for a sequel, is this the case?

   Kind regards
   Don

   Reply
2. Anonymous: 9 years ago

   I love his books. I’ve read The Faut in Our Stars and Paper Towns. I’m starting on Looking For Alaska next.

   Reply