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Made me cry and think about the power of love!

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CHAPTER ONE

L ate in the winter of my seventeenth year, my mother decided I was depressed, presumably because I rarely left the house, spent quite a lot of time in bed, read the same book over and over, ate infrequently, and devoted quite a bit of my abundant free time to thinking about death.

Whenever you read a cancer booklet or website or whatever, they always list depression among the side effects of cancer. But, in fact, depression is not a side effect of cancer. Depression is a side effect of dying. (Cancer is also a side effect of dying. Almost everything is, really.) But my mom believed I required treatment, so she took me to see my Regular Doctor Jim, who agreed that I was veritably swimming in a paralyzing and totally clinical depression, and that therefore my meds should be adjusted and also I should attend a weekly Support Group.

This Support Group featured a rotating cast of characters in various states of tumor-driven unwellness. Why did the cast rotate? A side effect of dying.

The Support Group, of course, was depressing as hell. It met every Wednesday in the basement of a stone-walled Episcopal church shaped like a cross. We all sat in a circle right in the middle of the cross, where the two boards would have met, where the heart of Jesus would have been.

I noticed this because Patrick, the Support Group Leader and only person over eighteen in the room, talked about the heart of Jesus every freaking meeting, all about how we, as young cancer survivors, were sitting right in Christ's very sacred heart and whatever.

So here's how it went in God's heart: The six or seven or ten of us walked/wheeled in, grazed at a decrepit selection of cookies and lemonade, sat down in the Circle of Trust, and listened to Patrick recount for the thousandth time his depressingly miserable life story-how he had cancer in his balls and they thought he was going to die but he didn't die and now here he is, a full-grown adult in a church basement in the 137th nicest city in America, divorced, addicted to video games, mostly friendless, eking out a meager living by exploiting his cancertastic past, slowly working his way toward a master's degree that will not improve his career prospects, waiting, as we all do, for the sword of Damocles to give him the relief that he escaped lo those many years ago when cancer took both of his nuts but spared what only the most generous soul would call his life.

AND YOU TOO MIGHT BE SO LUCKY!

Then we introduced ourselves: Name. Age. Diagnosis. And how we're doing today. I'm Hazel, I'd say when they'd get to me. Sixteen. Thyroid originally but with an impressive and long-settled satellite colony in my lungs. And I'm doing okay.

Once we got around the circle, Patrick always asked if anyone wanted to share. And then began the circle jerk of support: everyone talking about fighting and battling and winning and shrinking and scanning. To be fair to Patrick, he let us talk about dying, too. But most of them weren't dying. Most would live into adulthood, as Patrick had.

(Which meant there was quite a lot of competitiveness about it, with everybody wanting to beat not only cancer itself, but also the other people in the room. Like, I realize that this is irrational, but when they tell you that you have, say, a 20 percent chance of living five years, the math kicks in and you figure that's one in five...so you look around and think, as any healthy person would: I gotta outlast four of these bastards.)

The only redeeming facet of Support Group was this kid named Isaac, a long-faced, skinny guy with straight blond hair swept over one eye.

And his eyes were the problem. He had some fantastically improbable eye cancer. One eye had been cut out when he was a kid, and now he wore the kind of thick glasses that made his eyes (both the real one and the glass one) preternaturally huge, like his whole head was basically just this fake eye and this real eye staring at you. From what I could gather on the rare occasions when Isaac shared with the group, a recurrence had placed his remaining eye in mortal peril.

Isaac and I communicated almost exclusively through sighs. Each time someone discussed anticancer diets or snorting ground-up shark fin or whatever, he'd glance over at me and sigh ever so slightly. I'd shake my head microscopically and exhale in response.

***

So Support Group blew, and after a few weeks, I grew to be rather kicking-and-screaming about the whole affair. In fact, on the Wednesday I made the acquaintance of Augustus Waters, I tried my level best to get out of Support Group while sitting on the couch with my mom in the third leg of a twelve-hour marathon of the previous season's America's Next Top Model, which admittedly I had already seen, but still.

Me: "I refuse to attend Support Group."

Mom: "One of the symptoms of depression is disinterest in activities."

Me: "Please just let me watch America's Next Top Model. It's an activity."

Mom: "Television is a passivity."

Me: "Ugh, Mom, please."

Mom: "Hazel, you're a teenager. You're not a little kid anymore. You need to make friends, get out of the house, and live your life."

Me: "If you want me to be a teenager, don't send me to Support Group. Buy me a fake ID so I can go to clubs, drink vodka, and take pot."

Mom: "You don't take pot, for starters."

Me: "See, that's the kind of thing I'd know if you got me a fake ID."

Mom: "You're going to Support Group."

Me: "UGGGGGGGGGGGGG."

Mom: "Hazel, you deserve a life."

That shut me up, although I failed to see how attendance at Support Group met the definition of life. Still, I agreed to go-after negotiating the right to record the 1.5 episodes of ANTM I'd be missing.

I went to Support Group for the same reason that I'd once allowed nurses with a mere eighteen months of graduate education to poison me with exotically named chemicals: I wanted to make my parents happy. There is only one thing in this world shittier than biting it from cancer when you're sixteen, and that's having a kid who bites it from cancer.

***

Mom pulled into the circular driveway behind the church at 4:56. I pretended to fiddle with my oxygen tank for a second just to kill time.

"Do you want me to carry it in for you?"

"No, it's fine," I said. The cylindrical green tank only weighed a few pounds, and I had this little steel cart to wheel it around behind me. It delivered two liters of oxygen to me each minute through a cannula, a transparent tube that split just beneath my neck, wrapped behind my ears, and then reunited in my nostrils. The contraption was necessary because my lungs sucked at being lungs.

"I love you," she said as I got out.

"You too, Mom. See you at six."

"Make friends!" she said through the rolled-down window as I walked away.

I didn't want to take the elevator because taking the elevator is a Last Days kind of activity at Support Group, so I took the stairs. I grabbed a cookie and poured some lemonade into a Dixie cup and then turned around.

A boy was staring at me.

I was quite sure I'd never seen him before. Long and leanly muscular, he dwarfed the molded plastic elementary school chair he was sitting in. Mahogany hair, straight and short. He looked my age, maybe a year older, and he sat with his tailbone against the edge of the chair, his posture aggressively poor, one hand half in a pocket of dark jeans.

I looked away, suddenly conscious of my myriad insufficiencies. I was wearing old jeans, which had once been tight but now sagged in weird places, and a yellow T-shirt advertising a band I didn't even like anymore. Also my hair: I had this pageboy haircut, and I hadn't even bothered to, like, brush it. Furthermore, I had ridiculously fat chipmunked cheeks, a side effect of treatment. I looked like a normally proportioned person with a balloon for a head. This was not even to mention the cankle situation. And yet-I cut a glance to him, and his eyes were still on me.

It occurred to me why they call it eye contact.

I walked into the circle and sat down next to Isaac, two seats away from the boy. I glanced again. He was still watching me.

Look, let me just say it: He was hot. A nonhot boy stares at you relentlessly and it is, at best, awkward and, at worst, a form of assault. But a hot boy...well.

I pulled out my phone and clicked it so it would display the time: 4:59. The circle filled in with the unlucky twelve-to-eighteens, and then Patrick started us out with the serenity prayer: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. The guy was still staring at me. I felt rather blushy.

Finally, I decided that the proper strategy was to stare back. Boys do not have a monopoly on the Staring Business, after all. So I looked him over as Patrick acknowledged for the thousandth time his ball-lessness etc., and soon it was a staring contest. After a while the boy smiled, and then finally his blue eyes glanced away. When he looked back at me, I flicked my eyebrows up to say, I win.

He shrugged. Patrick continued and then finally it was time for the introductions. "Isaac, perhaps you'd like to go first today. I know you're facing a challenging time."

"Yeah," Isaac said. "I'm Isaac. I'm seventeen. And it's looking like I have to get surgery in a couple weeks, after which I'll be blind. Not to complain or anything because I know a lot of us have it worse, but yeah, I mean, being blind does sort of suck. My girlfriend helps, though. And friends like Augustus." He nodded toward the boy, who now had a name. "So, yeah," Isaac continued. He was looking at his hands, which he'd folded into each other like the top of a tepee. "There's nothing you can do about it."

"We're here for you, Isaac," Patrick said. "Let Isaac hear it, guys." And then we all, in a monotone, said, "We're here for you, Isaac."

Michael was next. He was twelve. He had leukemia. He'd always had leukemia. He was okay. (Or so he said. He'd taken the elevator.)

Lida was sixteen, and pretty enough to be the object of the hot boy's eye. She was a regular-in a long remission from appendiceal cancer, which I had not previously known existed. She said-as she had every other time I'd attended Support Group-that she felt strong, which felt like bragging to me as the oxygen-drizzling nubs tickled my nostrils.

There were five others before they got to him. He smiled a little when his turn came. His voice was low, smoky, and dead sexy. "My name is Augustus Waters," he said. "I'm seventeen. I had a little touch of osteosarcoma a year and a half ago, but I'm just here today at Isaac's request."

"And how are you feeling?" asked Patrick.

"Oh, I'm grand." Augustus Waters smiled with a corner of his mouth. "I'm on a roller coaster that only goes up, my friend."

When it was my turn, I said, "My name is Hazel. I'm sixteen. Thyroid with mets in my lungs. I'm okay."

The hour proceeded apace: Fights were recounted, battles won amid wars sure to be lost; hope was clung to; families were both celebrated and denounced; it was agreed that friends just didn't get it; tears were shed; comfort proffered. Neither Augustus Waters nor I spoke again until Patrick said, "Augustus, perhaps you'd like to share your fears with the group."

"My fears?"

"Yes."

"I fear oblivion," he said without a moment's pause. "I fear it like the proverbial blind man who's afraid of the dark."

"Too soon," Isaac said, cracking a smile.

"Was that insensitive?" Augustus asked. "I can be pretty blind to other people's feelings."

Isaac was laughing, but Patrick raised a chastening finger and said, "Augustus, please. Let's return to you andyour struggles. You said you fear oblivion?"

"I did," Augustus answered.

Patrick seemed lost. "Would, uh, would anyone like to speak to that?"

I hadn't been in proper school in three years. My parents were my two best friends. My third best friend was an author who did not know I existed. I was a fairly shy person-not the hand-raising type.

And yet, just this once, I decided to speak. I half raised my hand and Patrick, his delight evident, immediately said, "Hazel!" I was, I'm sure he assumed, opening up. Becoming Part Of The Group.

I looked over at Augustus Waters, who looked back at me. You could almost see through his eyes they were so blue. "There will come a time," I said, "when all of us are dead. All of us. There will come a time when there are no human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed or that our species ever did anything. There will be no one left to remember Aristotle or Cleopatra, let alone you. Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and discovered will be forgotten and all of this"-I gestured encompassingly-"will have been for naught. Maybe that time is coming soon and maybe it is millions of years away, but even if we survive the collapse of our sun, we will not survive forever. There was time before organisms experienced consciousness, and there will be time after. And if the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it. God knows that's what everyone else does."

I'd learned this from my aforementioned third best friend, Peter Van Houten, the reclusive author of An Imperial Affliction, the book that was as close a thing as I had to a Bible. Peter Van Houten was the only person I'd ever come across who seemed to (a) understand what it's like to be dying, and (b) not have died.

After I finished, there was quite a long period of silence as I watched a smile spread all the way across Augustus's face-not the little crooked smile of the boy trying to be sexy while he stared at me, but his real smile, too big for his face. "Goddamn," Augustus said quietly. "Aren't you something else."

Neither of us said anything for the rest of Support Group. At the end, we all had to hold hands, and Patrick led us in a prayer. "Lord Jesus Christ, we are gathered here in Your heart, literally in Your heart, as cancer survivors. You and You alone know us as we know ourselves. Guide us to life and the Light through our times of trial. We pray for Isaac's eyes, for Michael's and Jamie's blood, for Augustus's bones, for Hazel's lungs, for James's throat. We pray that You might heal us and that we might feel Your love, and Your peace, which passes all understanding. And we remember in our hearts those whom we knew and loved who have gone home to you: Maria and Kade and Joseph and Haley and Abigail and Angelina and Taylor and Gabriel and..."

It was a long list. The world contains a lot of dead people. And while Patrick droned on, reading the list from a sheet of paper because it was too long to memorize, I kept my eyes closed, trying to think prayerfully but mostly imagining the day when my name would find its way onto that list, all the way at the end when everyone had stopped listening.

When Patrick was finished, we said this stupid mantra together-LIVING OUR BEST LIFE TODAY-and it was over. Augustus Waters pushed himself out of his chair and walked over to me. His gait was crooked like his smile. He towered over me, but he kept his distance so I wouldn't have to crane my neck to look him in the eye. "What's your name?" he asked.

"Hazel."

"No, your full name."

"Um, Hazel Grace Lancaster." He was just about to say something else when Isaac walked up. "Hold on," Augustus said, raising a finger, and turned to Isaac. "That was actually worse than you made it out to be."

"I told you it was bleak."

"Why do you bother with it?"

"I don't know. It kind of helps?"

Augustus leaned in so he thought I couldn't hear. "She's a regular?" I couldn't hear Isaac's comment, but Augustus responded, "I'll say." He clasped Isaac by both shoulders and then took a half step away from him. "Tell Hazel about clinic."

Isaac leaned a hand against the snack table and focused his huge eye on me. "Okay, so I went into clinic this morning, and I was telling my surgeon that I'd rather be deaf than blind. And he said, 'It doesn't work that way,' and I was, like, 'Yeah, I realize it doesn't work that way; I'm just saying I'd rather be deaf than blind if I had the choice, which I realize I don't have,' and he said, 'Well, the good news is that you won't be deaf,' and I was like, 'Thank you for explaining that my eye cancer isn't going to make me deaf. I feel so fortunate that an intellectual giant like yourself would deign to operate on me.'"

"He sounds like a winner," I said. "I'm gonna try to get me some eye cancer just so I can make this guy's acquaintance."

"Good luck with that. All right, I should go. Monica's waiting for me. I gotta look at her a lot while I can."

"Counterinsurgence tomorrow?" Augustus asked.

"Definitely." Isaac turned and ran up the stairs, taking them two at a time.

Augustus Waters turned to me. "Literally," he said.

"Literally?" I asked.

"We are literally in the heart of Jesus," he said. "I thought we were in a church basement, but we are literally in the heart of Jesus."

"Someone should tell Jesus," I said. "I mean, it's gotta be dangerous, storing children with cancer in your heart."

"I would tell Him myself," Augustus said, "but unfortunately I am literally stuck inside of His heart, so He won't be able to hear me." I laughed. He shook his head, just looking at me.

"What?" I asked.

"Nothing," he said.

"Why are you looking at me like that?"

Augustus half smiled. "Because you're beautiful. I enjoy looking at beautiful people, and I decided a while ago not to deny myself the simpler pleasures of existence." A brief awkward silence ensued. Augustus plowed through: "I mean, particularly given that, as you so deliciously pointed out, all of this will end in oblivion and everything."

I kind of scoffed or sighed or exhaled in a way that was vaguely coughy and then said, "I'm not beau-"

"You're like a millennial Natalie Portman. Like V for Vendetta Natalie Portman."

"Never seen it," I said.

"Really?" he asked. "Pixie-haired gorgeous girl dislikes authority and can't help but fall for a boy she knows is trouble. It's your autobiography, so far as I can tell."

His every syllable flirted. Honestly, he kind of turned me on. I didn't even know that guys could turn me on-not, like, in real life.

A younger girl walked past us. "How's it going, Alisa?" he asked. She smiled and mumbled, "Hi, Augustus." "Memorial people," he explained. Memorial was the big research hospital. "Where do you go?"

"Children's," I said, my voice smaller than I expected it to be. He nodded. The conversation seemed over. "Well," I said, nodding vaguely toward the steps that led us out of the Literal Heart of Jesus. I tilted my cart onto its wheels and started walking. He limped beside me. "So, see you next time, maybe?" I asked.

"You should see it," he said. "V for Vendetta, I mean."

"Okay," I said. "I'll look it up."

"No. With me. At my house," he said. "Now."

I stopped walking. "I hardly know you, Augustus Waters. You could be an ax murderer."

He nodded. "True enough, Hazel Grace." He walked past me, his shoulders filling out his green knit polo shirt, his back straight, his steps lilting just slightly to the right as he walked steady and confident on what I had determined was a prosthetic leg. Osteosarcoma sometimes takes a limb to check you out. Then, if it likes you, it takes the rest.

I followed him upstairs, losing ground as I made my way up slowly, stairs not being a field of expertise for my lungs.

And then we were out of Jesus's heart and in the parking lot, the spring air just on the cold side of perfect, the late-afternoon light heavenly in its hurtfulness.

Mom wasn't there yet, which was unusual, because Mom was almost always waiting for me. I glanced around and saw that a tall, curvy brunette girl had Isaac pinned against the stone wall of the church, kissing him rather aggressively. They were close enough to me that I could hear the weird noises of their mouths together, and I could hear him saying, "Always," and her saying, "Always," in return.

Suddenly standing next to me, Augustus half whispered, "They're big believers in PDA."

"What's with the 'always'?" The slurping sounds intensified.

"Always is their thing. They'll always love each other and whatever. I would conservatively estimate they have texted each other the word always four million times in the last year."

A couple more cars drove up, taking Michael and Alisa away. It was just Augustus and me now, watching Isaac and Monica, who proceeded apace as if they were not leaning against a place of worship. His hand reached for her boob over her shirt and pawed at it, his palm still while his fingers moved around. I wondered if that felt good. Didn't seem like it would, but I decided to forgive Isaac on the grounds that he was going blind. The senses must feast while there is yet hunger and whatever.

"Imagine taking that last drive to the hospital," I said quietly. "The last time you'll ever drive a car."

Without looking over at me, Augustus said, "You're killing my vibe here, Hazel Grace. I'm trying to observe young love in its many-splendored awkwardness."

"I think he's hurting her boob," I said.

"Yes, it's difficult to ascertain whether he is trying to arouse her or perform a breast exam." Then Augustus Waters reached into a pocket and pulled out, of all things, a pack of cigarettes. He flipped it open and put a cigarette between his lips.

"Are you serious?" I asked. "You think that's cool? Oh, my God, you just ruined the whole thing."

"Which whole thing?" he asked, turning to me. The cigarette dangled unlit from the unsmiling corner of his mouth.

"The whole thing where a boy who is not unattractive or unintelligent or seemingly in any way unacceptable stares at me and points out incorrect uses of literality and compares me to actresses and asks me to watch a movie at his house. But of course there is always a hamartia and yours is that oh, my God, even though you HAD FREAKING CANCER you give money to a company in exchange for the chance to acquire YET MORE CANCER. Oh, my God. Let me just assure you that not being able to breathe? SUCKS. Totally disappointing. Totally."

"A hamartia?" he asked, the cigarette still in his mouth. It tightened his jaw. He had a hell of a jawline, unfortunately.

"A fatal flaw," I explained, turning away from him. I stepped toward the curb, leaving Augustus Waters behind me, and then I heard a car start down the street. It was Mom. She'd been waiting for me to, like, make friends or whatever.

I felt this weird mix of disappointment and anger welling up inside of me. I don't even know what the feeling was, really, just that there was a lot of it, and I wanted to smack Augustus Waters and also replace my lungs with lungs that didn't suck at being lungs. I was standing with my Chuck Taylors on the very edge of the curb, the oxygen tank ball-and-chaining in the cart by my side, and right as my mom pulled up, I felt a hand grab mine.

I yanked my hand free but turned back to him.

"They don't kill you unless you light them," he said as Mom arrived at the curb. "And I've never lit one. It's a metaphor, see: You put the killing thing right between your teeth, but you don't give it the power to do its killing."

"It's a metaphor," I said, dubious. Mom was just idling.

"It's a metaphor," he said.

"You choose your behaviors based on their metaphorical resonances..." I said.

"Oh, yes." He smiled. The big, goofy, real smile. "I'm a big believer in metaphor, Hazel Grace."

I turned to the car. Tapped the window. It rolled down. "I'm going to a movie with Augustus Waters," I said. "Please record the next several episodes of the ANTM marathon for me."
CHAPTER TWO
A ugustus Waters drove horrifically. Whether stopping or starting, everything happened with a tremendous JOLT. I flew against the seat belt of his Toyota SUV each time he braked, and my neck snapped backward each time he hit the gas. I might have been nervous-what with sitting in the car of a strange boy on the way to his house, keenly aware that my crap lungs complicate efforts to fend off unwanted advances-but his driving was so astonishingly poor that I could think of nothing else.

We'd gone perhaps a mile in jagged silence before Augustus said, "I failed the driving test three times."

"You don't say."

He laughed, nodding. "Well, I can't feel pressure in old Prosty, and I can't get the hang of driving left-footed. My doctors say most amputees can drive with no problem, but...yeah. Not me. Anyway, I go in for my fourth driving test, and it goes about like this is going." A half mile in front of us, a light turned red. Augustus slammed on the brakes, tossing me into the triangular embrace of the seat belt. "Sorry. I swear to God I am trying to be gentle. Right, so anyway, at the end of the test, I totally thought I'd failed again, but the instructor was like, 'Your driving is unpleasant, but it isn't technically unsafe.'"

"I'm not sure I agree," I said. "I suspect Cancer Perk." Cancer Perks are the little things cancer kids get that regular kids don't: basketballs signed by sports hero's, free passes on late homework, unearned driver's licenses, etc.

"Yeah," he said. The light turned green. I braced myself. Augustus slammed the gas.

"You know they've got hand controls for people who can't use their legs," I pointed out.

"Yeah," he said. "Maybe someday." He sighed in a way that made me wonder whether he was confident about the existence of someday. I knew osteosarcoma was highly curable, but still.

There are a number of ways to establish someone's approximate survival expectations without actually asking. I used the classic: "So, are you in school?" Generally, your parents pull you out of school at some point if they expect you to bite it.

"Yeah," he said. "I'm at North Central. A year behind, though: I'm a sophomore. You?"

I considered lying. No one likes a corpse, after all. But in the end I told the truth. "No, my parents withdrew me three years ago."

"Three years?" he asked, astonished.

I told Augustus the broad outline of my miracle: diagnosed with Stage IV thyroid cancer when I was thirteen. (I didn't tell him that the diagnosis came three months after I got my first period. Like: Congratulations! You're a woman. Now die.) It was, we were told, incurable.

I had a surgery called radical neck dissection, which is about as pleasant as it sounds. Then radiation. Then they tried some chemo for my lung tumors. The tumors shrank, then grew. By then, I was fourteen. My lungs started to fill up with water. I was looking pretty dead-my hands and feet ballooned; my skin cracked; my lips were perpetually blue. They've got this drug that makes you not feel so completely terrified about the fact that you can't breathe, and I had a lot of it flowing into me through a PICC line, and more than a dozen other drugs besides. But even so, there's a certain unpleasantness to drowning, particularly when it occurs over the course of several months. I finally ended up in the ICU with pneumonia, and my mom knelt by the side of my bed and said, "Are you ready, sweetie?" and I told her I was ready, and my dad just kept telling me he loved me in this voice that was not breaking so much as already broken, and I kept telling him that I loved him, too, and everyone was holding hands, and I couldn't catch my breath, and my lungs were acting desperate, gasping, pulling me out of the bed trying to find a position that could get them air, and I was embarrassed by their desperation, disgusted that they wouldn't just let go, and I remember my mom telling me it was okay, that I was okay, that I would be okay, and my father was trying so hard not to sob that when he did, which was regularly, it was an earthquake. And I remember wanting not to be awake.

Everyone figured I was finished, but my Cancer Doctor Maria managed to get some of the fluid out of my lungs, and shortly thereafter the antibiotics they'd given me for the pneumonia kicked in.

I woke up and soon got into one of those experimental trials that are famous in the Republic of Cancervania for Not Working. The drug was Phalanxifor, this molecule designed to attach itself to cancer cells and slow their growth. It didn't work in about 70 percent of people. But it worked in me. The tumors shrank.

And they stayed shrunk. Huzzah, Phalanxifor! In the past eighteen months, my mets have hardly grown, leaving me with lungs that suck at being lungs but could, conceivably, struggle along indefinitely with the assistance of drizzled oxygen and daily Phalanxifor.

Admittedly, my Cancer Miracle had only resulted in a bit of purchased time. (I did not yet know the size of the bit.) But when telling Augustus Waters, I painted the rosiest possible picture, embellishing the miraculousness of the miracle.

"So now you gotta go back to school," he said.

"I actually can't," I explained, "because I already got my GED. So I'm taking classes at MCC," which was our community college.

"A college girl," he said, nodding. "That explains the aura of sophistication." He smirked at me. I shoved his upper arm playfully. I could feel the muscle right beneath the skin, all tense and amazing.

We made a wheels-screeching turn into a subdivision with eight-foot-high stucco walls. His house was the first one on the left. A two-story colonial. We jerked to a halt in his driveway.

I followed him inside. A wooden plaque in the entryway was engraved in cursive with the words Home Is Where the Heart Is, and the entire house turned out to be festooned in such observations. Good Friends Are Hard to Find and Impossible to Forget read an illustration above the coatrack. True Love Is Born from Hard Times promised a needlepointed pillow in their antique-furnished living room. Augustus saw me reading. "My parents call them Encouragements," he explained. "They're everywhere."

***

His mom and dad called him Gus. They were making enchiladas in the kitchen (a piece of stained glass by the sink read in bubbly letters Family Is Forever). His mom was putting chicken into tortillas, which his dad then rolled up and placed in a glass pan. They didn't seem too surprised by my arrival, which made sense: The fact that Augustus made me feel special did not necessarily indicate that I was special. Maybe he brought home a different girl every night to show her movies and feel her up.

"This is Hazel Grace," he said, by way of introduction.

"Just Hazel," I said.

"How's it going, Hazel?" asked Gus's dad. He was tall-almost as tall as Gus-and skinny in a way that parentally aged people usually aren't.

"Okay," I said.

"How was Isaac's Support Group?"

"It was incredible," Gus said.

"You're such a Debbie Downer," his mom said. "Hazel, do you enjoy it?"

I paused a second, trying to figure out if my response should be calibrated to please Augustus or his parents. "Most of the people are really nice," I finally said.

"That's exactly what we found with families at Memorial when we were in the thick of it with Gus's treatment," his dad said. "Everybody was so kind. Strong, too. In the darkest days, the Lord puts the best people into your life."

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The beloved, #1 global bestseller by John Green, author of The Anthropocene Reviewed and Turtles All the Way Down“John Green is one of the best writers alive.” -E. Lockhart, #1 bestselling author of We Were...

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I am Maru - The funniest cat on the planet

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Maru is one very odd cat. He has a bit of a hat fetish, and then there's the boxes..... With lovely music by Hundred Little Reasons www.hundredlittlereasons.com Visit Mugumogu's channel for many more Maru vids...

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In third grade my teacher read Charlotte's Web.

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In third grade my teacher read Charlotte's Web.

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It was magical.

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Charlotte's Web is a book of children's literature by American author E. B. White and illustrated by Garth Williams; it was published on October 15, 1952, by Harper & Brothers. The novel tells the story of a livestock pig named Wilbur and his friendship with a barn spider named Charlotte. When Wilbur is in danger of being slaughtered by the farmer, Charlotte writes messages in her web praising Wilbur, such as "Some Pig" and "Humble", to persuade the farmer to let him live.

Charlotte's Web is considered a classic of children's literature, enjoyed by readers of all ages. The description of the experience of swinging on a rope swing at the farm is an often-cited example of rhythm in writing, as the pace of the sentences reflects the motion of the swing. In 2000, Publishers Weekly listed the book as the best-selling children's paperback of all time.

Charlotte's Web was adapted into an animated feature film by Hanna-Barbera Productions and Sagittarius Productions in 1973. Paramount released a direct-to-video sequel, Charlotte's Web 2: Wilbur's Great Adventure, in the US in 2003 (Universal released the film internationally). A live-action feature film version of E. B. White's original story was released in 2006. A video game based on this adaptation was also released in 2006.

After a little girl named Fern Arable pleads for the life of the runt of a litter of piglets, her father gives her the pig to nurture, and she names him Wilbur. She treats him as a pet, but a month later, Wilbur is no longer small and is sold to Fern's uncle, Homer Zuckerman. In Zuckerman's barnyard, Wilbur yearns for companionship but is snubbed by the other animals. He is befriended by a barn spider named Charlotte, whose web sits in a doorway overlooking Wilbur's enclosure. When Wilbur discovers that he is being raised for slaughter, she promises to find a way to save his life. Fern often sits on a stool, listening to the animals' conversation, but over the course of the story, as she starts to mature, she begins to find other interests.

As the summer passes, Charlotte ponders how to save Wilbur and comes up with a plan. Reasoning that Zuckerman would not kill a famous pig, Charlotte weaves words and short phrases in praise of Wilbur into her web. Charlotte weaves the words Some Pig into the web, and the next morning, the farmhand Lurvy sees the web and runs to find Mr. Zuckerman. This makes Wilbur, and the barn as a whole, into tourist attractions, because many people believe the web to be a miracle. After the excitement dies down, Charlotte weaves the word Terrific into her web, beginning the cycle anew. To maintain the public's interest in Wilbur, Charlotte then tells Templeton, a barn rat, to get another word for the web. He goes to the dump and finds a laundry detergent ad with the word radiant, which she then weaves into her web. Fern's mother starts to get worried that Fern is spending too much time around the animals because she is telling her mother stories about the animals talking. Mrs. Arable then goes to visit Dr. Dorian, who persuades her that being among animals is natural and likely therapeutic for Fern.

Wilbur is eventually entered into the county fair, and Charlotte, as well as Templeton, accompany him. He fails to win the blue ribbon but is awarded a special prize by the judges. Charlotte weaves the last word into her web, Humble. Charlotte hears the presentation of the award over the public address system and realizes that the prize means Zuckerman will cherish Wilbur for as long as the pig lives and will never slaughter him for his meat. However, Charlotte, being a barn spider with a naturally short lifespan, is already dying of natural causes by the time the award is announced. Knowing that she has saved Wilbur, and satisfied with the outcome of her life, she does not return to the barn with Wilbur and Templeton and instead remains at the fairgrounds to die. However, she allows Wilbur to take with him her egg sac, from which her children will hatch in the spring. Meanwhile, Fern, who has matured significantly since the beginning of the novel, loses interest in Wilbur and starts paying more attention to boys her age. She misses most of the fair's events in order to go on the Ferris wheel with Henry Fussy, one of her classmates.

Wilbur waits out the winter, a winter he would not have survived but for Charlotte. He is initially delighted when Charlotte's children hatch but is later devastated when most leave the barn. There are only three remaining spiders. Pleased at finding new friends, Wilbur names one of them Nellie, while the remaining two name themselves Joy and Aranea. Further generations of spiders keep Wilbur company in subsequent years.

Wilbur is a rambunctious pig, the runt of his litter. He is often strongly emotional.

Charlotte A. Cavatica, or simply Charlotte, is a spider who befriends Wilbur. In some passages, she is the heroine of the story.

John Arable is Wilbur's first owner.

Fern Arable, John's daughter, who adopts Wilbur when he's a piglet, and later visits him. She is the only human in the story capable of understanding animal conversation.

Lurvy, the hired man at Zuckerman's farm, who is the first to read the message in Charlotte's web.

Templeton is a rat who helps Charlotte and Wilbur only when offered food. He serves as a somewhat caustic, self-serving comic relief to the plot.

Avery Arable is Fern's elder brother and John's son. Like Templeton, he is a source of comic relief.

Homer Zuckerman is Fern's uncle who keeps Wilbur in his barn. He has a wife named Edith and an assistant named Lurvy.

Other animals in Zuckerman's barn, with whom Wilbur converses, include a disdainful lamb, a talkative goose, and an intelligent "old sheep".

Henry Fussy is a boy of Fern's age, of whom Fern becomes fond.

Dr. Dorian is the family physician/psychologist consulted by Fern's mother and something of a wise old man character.

Uncle is a large pig whom Charlotte disdains for coarse manners but recognizes as Wilbur's rival at the fair.

Charlotte's children are the 514 children of Charlotte. Although they were born at the barn, all but three of them (Aranea, Joy, and Nellie) go their own ways by ballooning.

Death is a major theme seen throughout Charlotte's Web and is brought forth by that of the spider, Charlotte. According to Norton D. Kinghorn, Charlotte's web acts as a barrier that separates two worlds. These worlds are that of life and death. Scholar Amy Ratelle says that through Charlotte's continual killing and eating of flies throughout the novel, White makes the concept of death normal for Wilbur and for the readers. Neither Wilbur nor the rat Templeton see death as a part of their lives; Templeton sees it only as something that will happen at some time in the distant future, while Wilbur views it as the end of everything.

Wilbur constantly has death on his mind at night when he is worrying over whether or not he will be slaughtered. Even though Wilbur is able to escape his death, Charlotte, the spider who takes care of Wilbur, is not able to escape her own. Charlotte passes away, but according to Trudelle H. Thomas, "Yet even in the face of death, life continues and ultimate goodness wins out". Jordan Anne Deveraux explains that E.B. White discusses a few realities of death. From the novel, readers learn that death can be delayed but that no one can avoid it forever.

For Norton D. Kinghorn, Charlotte's web also acts as a signifier of change. The change Kinghorn refers to is that of both the human world and the farm/barn world. For both of these worlds, change is something that cannot be avoided. Along with the changing of the seasons throughout the novel, the characters also go through their own changes. Jordan Anne Deveraux also explains that Wilbur and Fern each go through their changes to transition from childhood closer to adulthood throughout the novel. This is evidenced by Wilbur accepting death and Fern giving up her dolls. Wilbur grows throughout the novel, allowing him to become the caretaker of Charlotte's children just as she was a caretaker for him, as is explained by scholar Sue Misheff. But rather than accept the changes that are forced upon them, according to Sophie Mills, the characters aim to go beyond the limits of change. In a different way, Wilbur goes through a change when he switches locations. Amy Ratelle explains that when he moves from Fern's house to Homer Zuckerman's farm, Wilbur goes from being a loved pet to a farm animal.

Fern, the little girl in the novel, goes from being a child to being more of an adult. As she experiences this change, Kinghorn notes that it can also be considered a fall from innocence. Wilbur also starts out young and innocent at the beginning of the novel. A comparison is drawn between the innocence and youth of Fern and Wilbur. Sophie Mills states that the two characters can identify with one another. Both Wilbur and Fern are, at first, horrified by the realization that life must end; however, by the end of the novel, both characters learn to accept that, eventually, everything must die. According to Matthew Scully, the novel presents the difference in the worldview of adults versus the worldview of children. Children, such as Fern, believe killing another for food is wrong, while adults have been gradually conditioned to believe that it is natural.

Charlotte's Web was published three years after White began writing it. White's editor Ursula Nordstrom said that one day in 1952, E. B. White arrived at her office and handed her a new manuscript, the only copy of Charlotte's Web then in existence, which she read soon after and enjoyed. Charlotte's Web was released on October 15, 1952.

In light of White's Death of a Pig, published in 1948, which gives an account of his own failure to save a sick pig (bought for butchering), Charlotte's Web can be seen as White's attempt "to save his pig in retrospect". White's overall motivation for the book has not been revealed, and he once wrote: "I haven't told why I wrote the book, but I haven't told you why I sneeze, either. A book is a sneeze."

When White met the spider who originally inspired Charlotte, he called her Charlotte Epeira (after Epeira sclopetaria, the Grey Cross spider, now known as Larinioides sclopetarius), before discovering that the more modern name for that genus was Aranea. In the novel, Charlotte gives her full name as "Charlotte A. Cavatica", revealing her as a barn spider, an orb-weaver with the scientific name Araneus cavaticus.[citation needed ]

The arachnid anatomical terms (mentioned in the beginning of chapter nine) and other information that White used, came mostly from American Spiders by Willis J. Gertsch and The Spider Book by John Henry Comstock, both of which combine a sense of poetry with scientific fact. White incorporated details from Comstock's accounts of baby spiders, most notably the "flight" of the young spiders on silken parachutes. White sent Gertsch's book to illustrator Garth Williams. Williams's initial drawings depicted a spider with a woman's face, and White suggested that he simply draw a realistic spider instead.

White originally opened the novel with an introduction of Wilbur and the barnyard (which later became the third chapter) but decided to begin the novel by introducing Fern and her family on the first page. White's publishers were at one point concerned with the book's ending and tried to get White to change it.

Charlotte's Web has become White's most famous book, but White treasured his privacy and that of the farmyard and barn that helped inspire the novel, which have been kept off limits to the public according to his wishes.

Charlotte's Web was generally well-reviewed when it was released. In The New York Times, Eudora Welty wrote: "As a piece of work it is just about perfect, and just about magical in the way it is done."

Aside from its paperback sales, Charlotte's Web is 78th on the all-time bestselling hardback book list. According to publicity for the 2006 film adaptation (see below), the book has sold more than 45 million copies and been translated into 23 languages. It was a Newbery Honor book for 1953, losing to Secret of the Andes by Ann Nolan Clark for the medal.[citation needed ]

In 1970, White won the Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal, a major prize in the field of children's literature, for Charlotte's Web, along with his first children's book, Stuart Little (1945).[citation needed ]

Seth Lerer, in his book Children's Literature, finds that Charlotte represents female authorship and creativity, and compares her to other female characters in children's literature such as Jo March in Little Women and Mary Lennox in The Secret Garden. Nancy Larrick brings to attention the "startling note of realism" in the opening line, "Where's Papa going with that Ax?"

Illustrator Henry Cole expressed his deep childhood appreciation of the characters and story, and calls Garth Williams's illustrations full of "sensitivity, warmth, humor, and intelligence." Illustrator Diana Cain Bluthenthal states that Williams's illustrations inspired and influenced her.

An unabridged audio book read by White himself reappeared decades after it had originally been recorded. Newsweek writes that White reads the story "without artifice and with a mellow charm," and that "White also has a plangency that will make you weep, so don't listen (at least, not to the sad parts) while driving." Joe Berk, president of Pathway Sound, had recorded Charlotte's Web with White in White's neighbor's house in Maine (which Berk describes as an especially memorable experience) and released the book in LP. From Michael Sims: "The producer later said that it took him 17 takes to read the death scene of Charlotte. And finally, they would walk outside, and E.B. White would go, this is ridiculous, a grown man crying over the death of an imaginary insect. And then, he would go in and start crying again when he got to that moment." Bantam released Charlotte's Web alongside Stuart Little on CD in 1991, digitally remastered, having acquired the two of them for rather a large amount.

In 2005, a school teacher in California conceived of a project for her class in which they would send out hundreds of drawings of spiders (each representing Charlotte's child Aranea going out into the world so that she can return and tell Wilbur of what she has seen) with accompanying letters; they ended up visiting a large number of parks, monuments, and museums, and were hosted by and/or prompted responses from celebrities and politicians such as John Travolta and then-First Lady Laura Bush.

In 2003, Charlotte's Web was listed at number 170 on the BBC's The Big Read poll of the UK's 200 "best-loved novels." A 2004 study found that Charlotte's Web was a common read-aloud book for third-graders in schools in San Diego County, California. Based on a 2007 online poll, the National Education Association listed the book as one of its "Teachers' Top 100 Books for Children." It was one of the "Top 100 Chapter Books" of all time in a 2012 poll by School Library Journal.

In 2010, the New York Public Library reported that Charlotte's Web was the sixth most borrowed book in the library's history.

Its awards and nominations include:

The book was adapted into an animated feature of the same name in 1973 by Hanna-Barbera Productions and Sagittarius Productions with a score by the Sherman Brothers. In 2003, a direct-to-video sequel to that film, Charlotte's Web 2: Wilbur's Great Adventure, was released by Paramount Pictures.

In 2006, Paramount Pictures, with Walden Media, Kerner Entertainment Company, and Nickelodeon Movies, produced a live-action adaptation, starring Dakota Fanning as Fern and Julia Roberts as the voice of Charlotte, released on December 15, 2006.

On March 8, 2022, it was announced that Sesame Workshop was working on an animated miniseries based on the book. It was in production for a few months, and was slated to premiere in 2024 on Cartoon Network and HBO Max. On November 3, 2022, it was announced that the miniseries would not be moving forward.

A musical production was created with music and lyrics by Charles Strouse.

Tricycle Productions (Montreal, Canada) produced a touring version of Charlotte's Web in 1996 with arrangements of Strouse's score by Canadian composer Derek Aasland.

A video game of the 2006 film was developed by Backbone Entertainment and published by THQ and Sega, and released on December 12, 2006, for the Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS and PC. A separate game also based on the film was released a year later for the PlayStation 2 developed by Blast! Entertainment.

On March 17, 2015, HarperCollins Children's Books released an ebook version.

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Charlotte's Web is a book of children's literature by American author E. B. White and illustrated by Garth Williams; it was published on October 15, 1952, by Harper & Brothers. The novel tells the story of a livestock pig named Wilbur and his friendship with a barn spider named Charlotte.

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Stranger Things: Season 1 - Rotten Tomatoes

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1 New York Times Bestseller National Book Award Finalist