Realistic Fiction Reflection: An Abundance of Katherines

Green, J. (2006). An abundance of Katherines. New York, NY: Dutton Books.

Colin is a former child prodigy facing life after being dumped for the nineteenth time, by yet another woman named Katherine. His friend, Hassan, suggests a road trip to pull him out of his funk and the two Chicago natives wind up in Gutshot, Tennnessee. They meet Lindsey and her mother Hollis, who offers them summer jobs at the tampon string factory she owns. As Colin attempts to get over Katherine XIX, he struggles to create a mathematical theorem to predict and graphically model the course of his romantic relationships with the Katherines. In the course of getting over himself and his status as dumpee, he must figure out what to do with his life and figure out how to get and keep the girl.

Colin experiences emotional realism due to his heartbreak. He is a believable, likeable character, and his funny, happy-go-lucky friend Hassan contrasts wonderfully with Colin’s anguish. Colin experiences person-against-self conflict because he believes he will never amount to anything. And almost everyone has been dumped, so it’s easy to sympathize with Colin even when he is acting pathetic. What will also resonate with teens is the dilemma of popularity versus doing something that matters. Which is more important? The humor and yes, the profanity, will appeal to teens.

I chose this novel because I’d heard John Green was a very popular Young Adult author who connects with his fans via social media. I loved this novel, and at times laughed so much my 9-year old became curious. Some of the language I could not share with him! Some of the humorous references to Kentucky and Tennessee were a bit irreverent, but that’s my perspective from being from the state.

What really caught my interest was the appendix. John Green had a mathematician friend develop “The Theorem of Underlying Katherine Predictability”.  He explains the basics on how to plot ordered pairs, explains the Cartesian coordinate system, and describes a function. Having students read the appendix would be a fun, creative lead-in to a unit on graphing equations in Algebra. I plan on book talking this book and using the appendix as an introduction to my graphing unit in Algebra 1 this year. 

Mathematics Standard Grade 8 F: Define, Evaluate, Compare functions. Use functions to model relationships between quantities.