On My Bookshelf: Paper Towns by John Green

Basic plot from Amazon: When Margo Roth Spiegelman beckons Quentin Jacobsen in the middle of the night—dressed like a ninja and plotting an ingenious campaign of revenge—he follows her. Margo’s always planned extravagantly, and, until now, she’s always planned solo. After a lifetime of loving Margo from afar, things are finally looking up for Q . . . until day breaks and she has vanished. Always an enigma, Margo has now become a mystery. But there are clues. And they’re for Q.

Printz Medalist John Green returns with the trademark brilliant wit and heart-stopping emotional honesty that have inspired a new generation of readers.

Why I liked it: The first part of the book is awesome. Margo finds out that one of her boyfriend is cheating on her with one of her best friends so she recruits Quentin, her next door neighbor and childhood friend to help her exact her revenge. The dead fish, spray paint, and Vaseline are all thought out and executed perfectly.

But then Margo disappears, leaving a series of clues for Quentin to find her, only they might not be clues and she doesn't seem to want to be found. There's even the possibility that the clues will lead Quentin to her dead body. While Margo's parents are painted as the "bad guys" for saying enough with her shenanigans and changing their locks, for me Margo is the unattractive character. She gives no thought to her family or friends' feelings when she disappears right before high school graduation. She is selfish and only the detective investigating her disappearance seems to see that.

Like The Abundance of Katherines, also by John Green, this novel depicts wonderful boy friendships. Quentin's two best buds, Ben and Radar, are fabulously nerdy but hilarious and endlessly supportive of Quentin's quest to find Margo, including a highly unrealistic road trip the night of their senior graduation.

Classroom application: It's worth adding to your middle or high school classroom library; your girls, hopeless romantics, and nerdy boys will like it.

The revenge plot at the beginning of the novel would make an interesting writing exercise. Students could choose another character, one from another novel or one of their own creation, and plan out who that character would want to take revenge upon and how they would do it.

If you are interested in purchasing a copy of Paper Towns for yourself, you can find it on Amazon here.

Note: The Literary Maven is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.

#2ndaryELA Twitter Chat Topic: Goal Setting and Re-Establishing Your Classroom

Brynn Allison, The Literary Maven & Kristy, 2 Peas and a Dog are hosting #2ndaryELA on Twitter every Tuesday evening from 8 - 8:30 PM EST. #2ndaryELA is a weekly chat for secondary English Language Arts teachers focused on a topic. Every Sunday, we will post the topic and questions on our blogs to allow you to prepare for the upcoming Tuesday evening's chat. Thank you to everyone who joined us last week and we hope that you will join us again.

Looking for the recap? Click on the image below.

On Tuesday, January 5, our #2ndaryELA chat will focus on goal setting and re-establishing your classroom.

The Format:
8:00 Intros: What and where do you teach? Include a link to your blog if you have one. #2ndaryELA
8:05 Q1: How do you re-establish classroom expectations after the holiday break? #2ndaryELA
8:10 Q2: What do you students struggle with the most after being away from school? How do you support them? #2ndaryELA
8:15 Q3: What types of goals do you encourage students to set for the new year? #2ndaryELA
8:20 Q4: What goal setting activities do you do with your students? #2ndaryELA
8:25 Q5: Share some goal setting or classroom management resources that you find helpful. #2ndaryELA

The Directions:
1. Log into Twitter on Tuesday from 8-8:30 PM EST.
2. Search for tweets with the hashtag #2ndaryELA in the search bar. Make sure to click “All tweets.”
3. Introductions are for the first 5 minutes.
4. Starting at 8:05 (@literarymaven or @2peasandadog) will post questions every 5 minutes using the format Q1, Q2, Q3, etc. and the hashtag #2ndaryELA.
5. Respond to questions using the format A1, A2, A3, etc. with #2ndaryELA.
6. Follow any teachers responding and who are also using #2ndaryELA.
7. Like and respond to other teachers' tweets.

You can schedule your responses to the questions ahead of time using a scheduler like TweetDeck or HootSuite (but don't forget to use A1, A2, etc. and #2ndaryELA). Links are encouraged, so be sure to use a link shortener like tinyurl, bitly, goo.gl or ow.ly Just visit one of those links and paste your long link to shorten it for Twitter. Using images is also encouraged when relevant.

New to chats? Here are the rules:
1. Stay on topic & stay positive!
2. Please do not post or promote paid products unless specifically asked.
3. If you arrive late, try to look through other posts before beginning.
4. Feel free to just read, like, and/or retweet.
5. Always use our hashtag #2ndaryELA, including in your replies to others.
6. Make sure your twitter feed is set to public. (Also keep in mind that Twitter is completely public – that means students, parents, and administrators can and will read what you tweet.)

Be sure to spread the word to any teacher friends who might be interested in joining us as well. We look forward to chatting with you Tuesday evening!
Get caught up on past chats here: