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Want to understand John Green's popular page turner "Paper Towns"? Ray Moore's Study Guides provide insights into important texts. This text is popular with teens and allows them to consider how one's perception of a person's image can be misleading. This thought-provoking guide provides an introduction to the book, an annotated list of the characters, and chapter by chapter guiding questions with occasional commentary. The questions will allow you to develop your own ideas and thoughts about the text. Material and ideas for research and discussion on the controversial nature of the novel are included. Graphics organizers and vocabulary activities are also supplied as an aid to understanding the text.

A Study Guide

Paper Towns by John Green

John Green

One month before graduating from his Central Florida high school, Quentin "Q" Jacobsen basks in the predictable boringness of his life until the beautiful and exciting Margo Roth Spiegelman, Q's neighbor and classmate, takes him on a midnight adventure and then mysteriously disappears. An ALA Best Book for Young Adults. Reprint.

Paper Towns

micaela

Una Margo para cada uno de nosotros... y cada una era más un espejo que una ventana.

Rachel Braithwaite

“I imagine it is hard to go back once you’ve felt the continents in your palm.”

“The people are the place is the people.”

“What a treacherous thing it is to believe that a person is more than a person.”

“I just want to remember her. One last time, I want to remember her while still hoping to see her again.”

“I can almost imagine a happiness without her, the ability to let her go, to feel our roots are connected even if I never see that leaf of grass again.”

“Just remember that sometimes, the way you think about a person isn’t the way they actually are. Like, I always thought Lacey was so hot and so awesome and so cool, but now when it actually comes to being with her…it’s not the exact same. People are different when you can smell them and see them up close, you know?”

“It is easy to forget how full the world is of people, full to bursting, and each of them imaginable and consistently misimagined.

“I don’t know how I look, but I know how feel: Young. Goofy, Infinite.”

“…leaving feels good and pure only when you leave something important, something that mattered to you. Pulling life out by the roots. But you can’t do that until your life has grown roots.”

“It is so hard to leave—until you leave. And then it is the easiest thing in the world.”

“And as paralyzing and upsetting as all the never agains were, the final leaving felt perfect. Pure. The most distilled possible form of liberation.”

“All along, I kept thinking, I will never do this again, I will never be here again, this will never be my locker again, Radar and I will never write notes in calculus again, I will never see Margo across the hall again. This was the first time in my life that so many things would never happen again.”

“…even if you want to leave, it is so hard.”

“The abbreviated exam week meant that Wednesday was the last day of school for us. And all day long, it was hard not to walk around, thinking about the lateness of it all: The last time I stand in a circle outside the band room in the shade of this oak tree that has protected generations of band geeks. The last time I eat pizza in the cafeteria with Ben. The last time I sit in this school scrawling an essay with a cramped hand i to a blue book. The last time I glance up at the clock. The last time I see Chuck Parson prowling the halls, his smile half a sneer. Wow. I was becoming nostalgic for Chuck Parson. Something sick was happening inside of me.”

yep. did the same thing in all my la essays.

“I limped through my physics and government finals the next day and then stayed up till 2 A.M. on Tuesday finishing my final reaction paper for English about Moby Dick. Ahah was a hero, I decided. I had no particular reason for having decided this—particularly given that I hadn’t read the book—but decided it and reacted thusly.”

“…you listen to people so that you can imagine them, and you hear all the terrible and wonderful things people do to themselves and to one another, but in the end the listening exposes you even more than it exposes the people you’re trying to listen to.”

“For the longest time, it felt kind of like my chest cracking open, but not precisely in an unpleasant way.”

“Margo was not a miracle. She was not an adventure. She was not a fine and precious thing. She was a girl.”

“‘…on some fundamental level we find it difficult to understand that other people are human beings in the same way that we are? We idealize them as gods or dismiss them as animals.’”

“‘It’s so hard for anyone to show us how we look, and so hard for us to show anyone how we feel.’”

“Peeing is like a good book in that it is very, very hard to stop once you start.”

Kit 

We play the broken strings of our instruments one last time

It struck me as somewhat unfair that an asshole like Iason Worthington would get to have sex with both Margo and Becca. when perfectly likable individuals such as myself don't get to have sex with either of them--or anyone else, for that matter. 

Having been in love with Margo forever, Quentin is happy to help her with her strange plots and campaigns for revenge, but when she vanishes one evening without a trace, Quentin finds himself delving into clues in order to resolve many unanswered questions. 75,000 first printing.

Katerina

Every time after closing a John Green book, I am a different person. I learn so much and I am amazed by the quotes in his books. I reread them, holding on to them and letting them sink in. This is by far, one of the greatest modern authors I know of. I fell in love with the idea of a paper girl and the character's vision of people being made of strings. Absolutely beautiful. 

However, I did became annoyed with the whole "tracking down Margo" process in the middle part of the book. It was a whole bunch of nothing happening, in my opinion. Therefore, my rating drops to 4 (with pain in my heart, trust me!).

mallorie 🦌

Itzel

Paper Towns is the third book by John Green I read, after The Fault in Our Stars and Will Grayson, Will Grayson.

After three books, I think I've come to enjoy John Green's writing. It feels very very very relatable, and probably because it's YA, easy to read.

The thing is, this book was basically about learning that people are layers, and layers, and layers. That as we think about other persons, others do the same, they are not secondary characters in our own lives.

And just as Quentin did, falling in love with the idea we have of a person is very common, and often leads us to disappointment. And maybe, if we just got around the concept that everyone is their own selves and we shouldn't expect them to act as we want them to act, it wouldn't happen.

The whole sense of mystery and adventure was especially appealing to me, and the third part, the roadtrip was, to put it shortly, Brilliant! 

Eh, probably I also felt it relatable because Quentin and everyone was in their final month of high school, and having gone through that just a while ago... I felt understood.

Chloé

i will never get this time in my life back. like ever. ever. ever.

Sarah Sammis

it’s okay! i kinda enjoyed it but this kind of book is not really my thing

I thought this was a great book - there were times when it was a bit slow and there wasn’t much development in the mystery, but mostly it was funny, amusing, deep, thought-provoking, heartbreaking etc. Especially towards the end and the whole road-trip part was great. I also loved that it had a proper ending. Definitely recommend.

Evie Dean

well, this is a complete waste of time. i’m actually on a mission to re-read all of john green’s books atm. i didn’t know what sparked the idea but i guess i just wanted to know if i’d still like the books i have read before. i didn’t even finish this back then in middle school and almost didn’t now. i guess that’s really saying something.

hira

Daniel Spruill

WRECKED ME. Thanks yet again, John. The best author ever.

chloe rae

I had no idea this book was going to be funny. I mean, it was HILARIOUS. I was flat-out laughing the whole time! And even though the book was already amazing, the last hundred pages or so really got me. At that point I couldn't put it down, not for a second. So well written. John Green has yet to disappoint me.

Annika Arguemore

first of all, if you'd say this book was a lot like Looking For Alaska that's when you're slightly right but you're also mostly wrong. Margo, in a lot of ways, is not like Alaska. the only thing they have in common is probably their intellectual bad assness and their mysterious auras.

I can relate to Margo. I've made the same mistakes she's made (falling into the wrong crowd and shit). I didn't think my friends were genuine either but unlike her, I didn't have the courage to prank them and throw fish around their properties. I think I live in a paper town. I was a paper girl but I'm not anymore, I guess. I'm still a paper girl in a sense that I still don't know who I am and I hide my thoughts in fear that my current friends might abandon me if they saw the real me (which they've seen and they stayed. thank God) I just need a vacation from all of this things happening surrounding me. it's like I want to escape and be in another place where people expect nothing from me and they don't know me or who I was or what I've done. 

now playing: All Signs Point To Lauderdale by ADTR. this book matches almost perfectly with this song.

I love how this book also emphasizes the humanness of people and that you should really just accept them as they are and not hate them because they're not your idea of who they're supposed to be; because they're not who you thought they were. this book honestly gives me hope. I wish I could still believe that not everyone here's make believe and that there's still sincerity in all that people do.

Matcha Donut

★★★★★ // Favorite John Green book. I didn't realize how much I loved this book until I re-read it a few years later. It was nostalgic. Just like Q, I didn't love high school as much as I've been letting on. But what sustains my fondness over it isn't the people and the big moments, but that temporal moment of my life when I was young and bitter and still utterly curious about the world. And this quest to find Margo had both been a not-so-subtle quest to find himself, and this romantic idea of wandering the earth to find his 'soul mate.' The Greek belief that soul mates are bound to find each other's half and reconnect is reminiscent of this journey, but I'd like to think that staying together forever is not necessarily the case. Sometimes meeting that one person who understands you is enough. More so, I loved this book's tackling of our projections—of how much we idealize a person up to such point that we forgot that we do not own their memories, and neither how they'll turn out to be. What a treacherous thing to believe—that a person is more than a person.

skim haunts

Me gustaba de adolescente y luego crecí. Mal escrito, mal redacta y cliché. Si tiene la oportunidad de leerlo, desaprovéchala. 

Ximena Martini

lea.

Katie Roberts

This might be my favorite read of the year. (granted, I've only read about 10) It was a very fun read. I loved the road trip. And Margo is crazy for not coming back with Quentin. But I kind of get it. This book made me want to drive to New York and back as fast as possible, for no reason. For the next few weeks, I will be thinking, "Be like Margo." And, "Would Margo do this?" This book was not very predictable, IMO. I recommend it. :)

Payton Washer

This is my second John Green book & I do understand why we all loved them as teens already! The way they all saw each other was so relatable & still is to be quite honest. The pacing was great & the characters were developed well!

Mariah crawford

Ivy Vatsala

Average read. Compelling characters but the plot stagnates after a while. 
Though I was glad to learn about paper towns, the concept was fascinating.

I really enjoyed reading this book mostly because the story develops in Orlando, and it was really nice to picture in my mind all the places and the culture of the city.

This is a story about decisions leading to personal growth and bravery at a young age. It is not easy to fully know who we are and what we want to do at a young age, and loved that both main characters inspired each other to do so. 

The writing was good but at times cringy. 

Ani Velasquez

I really enjoyed reading this book mostly because the story develops in Orlando, and it was really nice to picture in my mind all the places and the culture of the city.

This is a story about decisions leading to personal growth and bravery at a young age. It is not easy to fully know who we are and what we want to do at a young age, and loved that both main characters inspired each other to do so. 

The writing was good but at times cringy. 

Hannah Yang

So. I sat on my bed, turned on the air con, turned on all of the lights, closed the curtains, and read Paper Towns in one go. As usual, John Green did not disappoint. Road trips. Broken girls. Whimsical imaginings. Clues. I still have this airy, light-headed, brain dead, head-rush feeling.

It's difficult to describe Paper Towns perfectly, the same way Quentin discovers it's impossible to imagine someone, to be someone perfectly. I slipped through Paper Towns so quickly, I couldn't stop turning the pages, and it made me think so much it was as though I wasn't thinking at all.

I will admit that the idea is far from original, and was carried out pretty mediocrely: there's a boy and a girl, childhood friends that drifted apart, but the boy's still in love with the girl, and then suddenly the girl disappears so he goes on a grand quest to find her, etc. Most of the book was dramatic quotes and philosophical crap, and more teenagers spouting words that are way-too-quirky. But for some reason I liked it? A loooot?

The plot slid from one point to another so smoothly, and things just slipped into place from one clue to the next. I fell in love with the lovable characters. Quentin, Margo, Ben, Radar, Lacey... they're all waiting for you to meet them in Paper Town's pages. I fell in love with a nonsensical story that made more sense than it should have. I fell in love with the flawless execution of an imperfectly perfect story.

I think the thing about John Green books is that they are about the thoughts and emotions, and less about the actual plot. If I focused more on Q's journey to Margo I would have been bored to tears, since the actual fun road trip happened veeery late into the book. However, if you focus on the pretty quotes and such that are shamelessly thrown at your face, you might actually enjoy the book more. 

John Green writes in a way that I reaaally like to read but I do know it's not for everyone. Nevertheless, I would recommend Paper Towns. But the way that you read it is important. Focusing too much on the wrong thing could very well ruin the story.

Note about reading John Green books: I have been reading some reviews of various John Green books and lots of them mention the similarities between each book. I think it's necessary to have a time gap between reading each one, or the similarities do get distracting. It's easier to accept if you don't read them one after another.

reread this 10 years after my first read...... i dont know who decided in 2014 that john green was peak of literature 

Paper Towns by John Green A Study Guide

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