Rationale: The Fault in Our Stars
Green, J. (2012). The Fault in Our Stars. Dutton Books for Young Readers.
Age Range: 14 and up, Grade Range: Gr 9 and up
Summary:
Hazel Grace is living with, and dying from, thyroid cancer. She’s 16 years old, and a miracle for having survived this long. She’d rather stay home and watch America’s Next Top Model with her mom, but at her mom’s insistence, she reluctantly attends the Cancer Kids Support Group, pointless as it seems. Then one day, Augustus Waters shows up at a meeting, even though he’s in remission, to support his friend Isaac, who’s about to lose a second eye to his particular cancer. The connection between the two is instant.
After Augustus reads Hazel’s favorite novel, An Imperial Affliction, a book by the reclusive (and fictional, created by Green) author Peter Van Houton, the two embark upon an adventure to meet the author and ask him what happens after the abrupt ending in which the main character dies. Using Augustus’s “Wish” granted by the “Genies” after losing his leg to osteosarcoma, they fly to Amsterdam, have a romantic dinner paid for by Van Houton, then go to his home the next day, only to find it was his assistant, Lidewij, who has been prodding the bitter author to engage with them and who facilitated most of their visit. They have a horrifying experiencing in which Van Houton is just about as awful to them as could be imagined, does not answer their questions, after which the distraught Lidewij quits her long-time employer and accompanies the teens to visit the Anne Frank house. At the House, Hazel and Augustus enjoy a liberating public kiss that prompts a celebratory round of applause from the other tourists and captures how utterly joy and tragedy can become entangled in a poignant salute to all the beauty and goodness that survives even when we do not.
After the tour of the Anne Frank House, Hazel and Augustus return to Augustus’s hotel room where they lose their virginity to one another. The next day, Hazel learns that Augustus recently had begun having some concerning symptoms and while she had been in the hospital before their trip, scans revealed his cancer had returned and spread throughout his body, and he only had a short time to live. All along, Hazel had thought she would be the first to go, that he had recovered and would go on to live his life after she eventually died. Yet, after a rapid deterioration, it is Augustus that leaves first.
Value
Inspired by his experience as a student chaplain and the very real people, with all their quirks and flaws and brilliances and shortcomings, he saw suffering both terrible disease and losing their identities as people due to the far too common habit of healthy people conflating the disease with the person, Green wanted to tell a realistic cancer story that was more about the person than the disease. Once again, Green is interested in breaking down our perceptions of people and revealing the realities of people. And, as always, he makes his reader laugh, in this case, probably also while crying, but one could argue that moving the needle toward more people who can laugh out loud through the waterworks can only do us all a lot of good.
Potential Problems
Fault is most frequently banned or challenged due to its depiction of teen sex.
The Fault in Our Stars was banned or challenged twenty-seven times in the 2023-2024 school year according to PEN America. Three of these were in Florida, one in Wisconsin, and the rest in Iowa. All but one were initiated solely by administrative action. Most resulted in district-wide bans.
Nathalie op de Beeck of Publisher’s Weekly reported this week (4/29/25) on the Florida lawsuit in which Green is one of the plaintiffs:
“On April 29, in response to an April 1 request for summary judgment by Florida attorney general James Uthmeier and his legal team, the plaintiffs in Penguin Random House LLC v. Gibson urged Florida district court judge Carlos E. Mendoza to make his determination in a case targeting the improper removal of books from public school classrooms and libraries. Critics argue that the law violates the First Amendment, fails to acknowledge the expertise of librarians and educators who select books and materials, and enables unconstitutional prohibitions on school materials that are alleged to be ‘pornographic’ or ‘harmful to minors.’”
*A Note on the Iowa bans: these are largely actions taken under Iowa’s new book banning legislation contained within SF 496, a large education bill signed into law in 2023. This is the law that triggered the suit brought by Penguin Random House and four of its censored authors, including John Green, as well as an Iowa high school student, three Iowa educators and the state’s largest teacher’s union, the Iowa State Education Association (ISEA). In a March 2025 piece in Little Village, an independent Iowan magazine, Paul Brennan reports on U.S. District Court Judge Stephen Locher’s new injunction halting the state’s book ban:
“Plaintiffs have established, at minimum, several dozen unconstitutional applications of Senate File 496 involving books that have undeniable political, artistic, literary, and/or scientific value,” he wrote. “This includes books that are: (a) historical classics like As I Lay Dying, Ulysses, Brave New World, 1984, Native Son, and Slaughterhouse-Five; (b) modern award winners or highly acclaimed books like I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Song of Solomon, Beloved, The Bluest Eye, The Kite Runner, Nineteen Minutes, Speak, Shout, Looking for Alaska, The Fault in Our Stars, and Last Night at the Telegraph Club, many of which address bullying, racism, sexual assault, or other forms of trauma and grief; (c) found on the Advanced Placement exam or otherwise serve important educational purposes like The Color Purple, Native Son, The Handmaid’s Tale.”
Reviews
“I don’t know how I first came across The Fault in Our Stars, but sometime last winter I picked it up, and before I knew it, I was sitting on a DC Metro bus, tears streaming down my face, surrounded by people genuinely worried about my well-being. This is a book that breaks your heart—not by wearing it down, but by making it bigger and bigger until it bursts.” —The Atlantic
“He’s in remission from the osteosarcoma that took one of his legs. She’s fighting the brown fluid in her lungs caused by tumors. Both know that their time is limited. Sparks fly when Hazel Grace Lancaster spies Augustus “Gus” Waters checking her out across the room in a group-therapy session for teens living with cancer. He’s a gorgeous, confident, intelligent amputee who always loses video games because he tries to save everyone. She’s smart, snarky and 16; she goes to community college and jokingly calls Peter Van Houten, the author of her favorite book, An Imperial Affliction, her only friend besides her parents. He asks her over, and they swap novels. He agrees to read the Van Houten and she agrees to read his—based on his favorite bloodbath-filled video game. The two become connected at the hip, and what follows is a smartly crafted intellectual explosion of a romance. From their trip to Amsterdam to meet the reclusive Van Houten to their hilariously flirty repartee, readers will swoon on nearly every page. Green’s signature style shines: His carefully structured dialogue and razor-sharp characters brim with genuine intellect, humor and desire. He takes on Big Questions that might feel heavy-handed in the words of any other author: What do oblivion and living mean? Then he deftly parries them with humor: “My nostalgia is so extreme that I am capable of missing a swing my butt never actually touched.” Dog-earing of pages will no doubt ensue. Green seamlessly bridges the gap between the present and the existential, and readers will need more than one box of tissues to make it through Hazel and Gus’ poignant journey.” —Kirkus
“Green writes books for young adults, but his voice is so compulsively readable that it defies categorization. He writes for youth, rather than to them, and the difference is palpable. He doesn't dumb anything down. His language is complex, his syntax adult. He freely references Kierkegaard and William Carlos Williams alongside bloody video games and action movies. Add to that a raw and real glimpse at childhood illness, and his latest, The Fault in Our Stars, may be his best book yet.” —NPR
“Gr 9 Up--John Green's compelling, engaging novel (Dutton, 2012) is about life, and love, and death. Hazel was diagnosed with terminal cancer at the age of 13. Three years later, she is still alive. However, her life is turned upside down when she meets Augustus Waters at a support group for teens with cancer. They embark on a relationship that has the potential to become an emotional grenade. Gus uses his "last wish" granted to sick children by the Genie Foundation to take Hazel to Amsterdam in order to meet Peter Van Houten, the author of her favorite book about a girl who has cancer. She believes there is more to the story and wants the author to give her additional information. Van Houten's response is disappointing, but in the end Hazel allows herself to love Gus. Kate Rudd narrates in a relaxed style, perfectly voicing all of Green's well-developed characters. This novel doesn't pull any punches, and listeners' emotions will run the gamut from laughing out loud to sobbing with joy or grief. A strong choice for young adult collections.” —SLJ
Awards
2013 YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adult Selection
Colorado Blue Spruce Teen Book Award, 2016
Illinois Reads Program, 2015
Illinois Abe Awards, 2013-2014
Kansas Bluegrass Book Award, 2012-2013
Michigan Library Association Thumbs Up! Award, 2012-2013
New Hampshire Flume Award, 2014
(see Book Resume for more)
Alternate Titles
All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven
Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell
Five Feet Apart by Rachael Lippincott
If I Stay by Gayle Forman
I’ll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson
The Sun is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon
They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
Additional Resources
An Educator’s Guide to the Works of John Green
The Fault in Our Stars FAQ — John Green
The Fault in Our Stars - Unite Against Book Bans - Book Résumés
Literature Map - The Tourist Map of Literature
“You have a choice in this world, I believe, about how to tell sad stories, and we made the funny choice.” —John Green, The Fault in Our Stars (2012)
“I tried to write that book for almost 10 years. Ever since I worked as a chaplain, I would go back, I was trying to work on what I called the Children's Hospital Story, although in all of its previous incarnations, it starred this 22-year-old hospital chaplain, who was, like, surprisingly handsome and, like, hooking up with doctors. It was very embarrassing. I hope that — it was just terrible. But you know, I would go back to that story and go back to it and go back to it. Then in 2010 a good friend of mine died of cancer, a young friend, and I went back to the story, and I went back to it angry and needing to work.” —John Green (2014)