Emily Drabble 

Paper Towns readalong – prologue and part one

Welcome everyone to our Paper Towns readalong! We’re discussing the prologue and part one (The Strings) of John Green’s divine tale all this week! You can share your thoughts on Twitter and Facebook using #PaperTownsRead or email us childrens.books@theguardian.com and we’ll feed into this blog
  
  

Paper Towns
Cara Delevingne as Margo and Nat Wolff as Q in the film version of John Green’s Paper Towns. Let’s read the book together for the first time or the 10th! Photograph: Bloomsbury

There’s only one thing better than reading a brilliant book and that’s reading it in good company. So to celebrate John Green’s Paper Towns being made into a film (and we hope we will still be celebrating when we see it) come and join our #PaperTownsRead readalong, the nice people at Bloomsbury books will be joining in and we might even see John Green popping up!

Basically, it’s just a chance for all of us to read the book at the same time, together. It should be great fun, and a chance to get to know not only John Green’s book a little better, but also other readers and teen site members.

Starting today and continuing all week we’ll be chatting about Paper Towns, the prologue (and look you can even join in with this bit if you haven’t got the book yet as we’ve helpfully got it here) and part one (The Strings). There are lots of ways you can get involved.

  1. You can tweet about it using #PaperTownsRead and even better add @GdnChildrenBks too. Then everyone who is joining our readalong can see your nugget of wisdom, comment on it, reply and join in - you’ll probably gain some great new followers on Twitter too! We’ll add as many as we can to this blog so they are all in one place.
  2. On Facebook. Again you need to use #PaperTownsRead. Go to the Guardian Teen Facebook page and there you’ll find this article ready and waiting for your likes and comments. Again, we’ll add as many as we can to this blog so they are all in one place.
  3. Good old fashioned email, if Twitter or Facebook aren’t your thing why don’t you just email us your thoughts childrens.books@theguardian.com with the title #PaperTownsRead and we can add them to this page too!
Paper Towns book
You can buy the Paper Towns book from the Guardian bookshop at a special price of £5.99 Photograph: PR

So now let’s get chatting! (and we’re going to give one film poster away to one lucky commentator today as well!)

Here are some initial ideas to get you going but we really want the discussion to be led by you. So start sending in your comments and questions right now!

  • What are your first impressions of Q and of Margo? What did you think about their relationship in the prologue and The Strings?
  • “It’s a paper town… All those paper people living in their paper houses, burning the future to stay warm” - What do you think about Margo’s ‘paper towns’ view of the world? Tell us!
  • What’s your favourite quote from the book so far? Do share on #PaperTownsRead
  • Why do you think Margo chooses Q as her accomplice on her campaign of revenge?
  • Do you think Margo’s targets for revenge get what they deserved?
  • Is there something extra special about the way John Green writes? If you agree, can you eloquently describe what this magical something is?
  • Do you like the way the book is divided up into parts – and find the part titles a thrill?
  • Which character do you most identify with at this point and why?

We can’t wait to hear what you have to say and what you want to talk about – remember to use #PaperTownsRead on everything you do, whether it’s Twitter, Facebook or by email to childrens.books@theguardian.com.

Let’s read!

Your comments, thoughts, wisdoms, ideas on Paper Towns: the prologue and part one The Strings (we’ll talk about part two The Grass and Part three The Vessel from Monday 10 August)

HorseLover3000, on email

Personally, I hated the Paper Towns book. I didn’t think a lot of The Fault in Our Stars either, if I’m honest. Yes, I found it sad, but in my opinion there are so many better contemporary YA books that have gone almost unnoticed in comparison to the massive hype surrounding the books of John Green. I found the film of TFIOS way better than the book, which is something I can rarely say. I can only hope the same is true for Paper Towns, as I found the book unexciting, with a fairly good concept that somehow bored me massively. From what I can tell, I am the only teenage girl not obsessed with Green’s books. I’m content to stay that way.

 

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