John Michael Green Research Paper

John Michael Green, the New York Times bestselling author of The Fault in Our Stars, is known best for his young adult novels which have even been made into movies. He was born on August 24, 1977, in Indianapolis, Indiana, to Sydney and Mike Green and grew up in Orlando, Florida. From a young age, Green loved reading all kinds of books. He had a supportive family and was a happy child but had a rough time in middle school. His family decided to move him to a boarding school where he had a much better time. He also enjoyed his time in college, earning two degrees. He has written many books which have earned him four spots on the New York Times Bestseller list. Green has accomplished a lot in his life as an author, vlogger, writer, producer,

John Green’s educational experiences were a major contributing factor to his success as an author even though school never really did come easily to him. At Green’s first school, he was bullied nonstop which made him hate going to school every day. Also, he made bad grades on his tests despite everyone, from his teachers to his parents, telling him that he was smart (Braun 12). All Green wanted was to have a lot of friends and be popular, but he was bullied anyway. Because of this, he left his school and transferred to a boarding school in Alabama called Indian Springs. He felt welcomed at his new school; he felt like he fit in and made many friends who loved books just like he did. He still made poor grades, but twice placed second in his school’s creative writing contest (Braun 13). After high school, Green went to Kenyon College in Ohio. The environment at Kenyon made him enjoy attending

Before Green went to divinity school in Chicago, he worked as a chaplain at a children’s hospital. There, his job was to counsel the families of dying children. Because he worked a lot with teens, he started to understand their lives. The teens he worked with gave him inspiration for his future books (“John Green.” Contemporary 2). Green said this about his job: “It was difficult and traumatic,” he said later. “I’ve never done anything harder than sitting with a parent as their child died. That happened every day” (Braun 15). Green started questioning his faith when a two-year-old girl came in with a head injury. The girl soon died and Green found out that her father had caused the injury. He realized that he really hated the father and decided he could not be a priest (Braun 15-16). Instead of going to divinity school, he found a job with the magazine Booklist, which reviewed books for librarians. First, Green’s job was to enter data, but he was quickly promoted to a book reviewer. While reading all of the books he was reviewing, Green started dreaming of becoming a writer once again (Braun 16). Green wanted to write a young adult novel based on the teens from the hospital he worked at, but he was having a rough time. Suddenly, Green became friends with the editor of Booklist, Ilene Cooper, and the editor in chief, Bill Ott. He told them