John Green

~ Laura

I read The Fault in Our Stars in one big gulp last night, and now I’m mildly obsessed with John Green.

Who’s John Green? If you have to ask, then you’re old. But according to his vlog about being middle age, you shouldn’t feel so bad about it.

Published by Laura

8 thoughts on “John Green”

  1. My kids are huge fans of his (and his brother Hank’s) Crash Course educational videos. The ones I’ve watched are substantively pretty good, although short and shallow.

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  2. Interesting how we learn things — I’ve encountered Hank Green’s videos (on Synesthesia, for example) and had no idea that he was John Green’s brother (I did know who John Green was) or that they had videos together (VlogBrothers, too, and others, I think). Hank Green also has blogs under “SciShow”.

    Shallow and short is a good description, but that’s not a bad starting point for a topic. The problem is when the kids stop there, especially when especially when the research is for a project they are doing, and end up reproducing the you tube summary.

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  3. I love John Green for one reason: he drew my daughter to read higher level books at the point where she had stopped listening to me and my book recommendations. For Xmas this year, I got her a signed copy of Paper Towns, her favorite. My favorite John Green is actually a short story called “A Cheertastic Christmas Miracle.”

    I love Hank Green for The Lizzie Bennett Diaries, which everyone should watch. It is awesome.

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  4. LOL–I teach at an all-girls school and have 12-year-old daughters, so I’ve been on board the John Green train for a few years now! Lizzie Bennett Diaries is indeed awesome.

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  5. I made my first year history class sit up and take notice when I linked some of John Green’s history videos in their course materials. One noted that the video’s interpretation and mine differed by quite a bit which actually pleased me because, hey, they paid attention to both arguments! John Green is a dominating force in YA literature but, thankfully, he appears to be a kind, creative and positive force so I’ll keep on linking to his videos and vlog.

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  6. There’s a minor controversy in the genre/feminism area about John Green, in that he gets a lot of attention where a lot of equally good women YA writers don’t, and the people who are his friends seem to get more attention from editors (which is not at all to say their writing doesn’t deserve it, but lots of people who deserve it still don’t get it).

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  7. See, e.g., On the John Green effect.

    Quote: Ah. “The John Green genre,” and “Greenlit!” Sure! Jacobs is talking with a lot of authority for someone who has no idea what he’s talking about. He’s not alone, though—lots of people who have no idea what they are talking about believe that YA is two genres: Twilight and its imitators and John Green and those he supposedly inspired. Guess which one they think is better?

    The idea that first person funny-sad contemporary YA realism is “the John Green genre” might come as a surprise to all the women who have been writing it for a decade or two or three. I’m sure it came as a surprise to John Corey Whaley, too, who thought he was writing his own books. But both books have cancer in them, so Noggin obviously owes a big debt.

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  8. It’s hardly John Green’s fault that the WSJ and others are stupid about YA. Lots of people are stupid about YA and think a genre is only important when white males write it. Still, he’s a good writer and he does a lot of good in the world, I think. I had him come speak at my university when he had only three novels published–no, two!–and he was terrific: smart, funny, self-deprecating. He had just started his vlogbrothers project at the time. I think he’s a brilliant businessman, true, but he’s also a very good writer. But there are lots of other really good YA writers out there, many of whom have been at it for longer, and/or who are neither white nor male.

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