The Fault in Our Stars author John Green delivered the commencement speech at the graduation ceremony for Butler University’s class of 2013. To read the entire speech, head to Green’s Tumblr page.

Watch the entire speech in the video embedded above (his talk begins at the 1:01:08 mark). Here’s an excerpt:

I would just note that the default assumption is that the point of human life is to be as successful as possible, to acquire lots of fame or glory or money as defined by quantifiable metrics: number of twitter followers, or facebook friends, or dollars in one’s 401k.

This is the hero’s journey, right? The hero starts out with no money and ends up with a lot of it, or starts out an ugly duckling and becomes a beautiful swan, or starts out an awkward girl and becomes a vampire mother, or grows up an orphan living under the staircase and then becomes the wizard who saves the world. We are taught that the hero’s journey is the journey from weakness to strength. But I am here today to tell you that those stories are wrong. The real hero’s journey is the journey from strength to weakness.

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The 2013 Children’s Choice Book Award winners have been revealed. Jeff Kinney took author of the year award and John Green won the teen book of the year prize.

We’ve linked to free samples of all the winners below. How many have you read? Here’s more from the release:

The Children’s Book Council and Every Child a Reader announced the winners of the sixth annual Children’s Choice Book Awards (CCBAs) at a charity gala benefitting Every Child a Reader in New York City last night.  The announcement is an annual highlight of Children’s Book Week (May 13-19, 2013) as the CCBAs is the only national book awards program where the winning titles are selected by kids and teens. Young readers across the country voted in record numbers for their favorite books, author, and illustrator at bookstores, school libraries, and at bookweekonline.com, casting more than 1,000,000 votes.

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The American Library Association (ALA) has released its annual list of the most frequently challenged library books of the year. We’ve linked to free samples of all the books on the list–follow the links below to read these controversial books yourself.

The list was part of the ALA’s 2013 State of America’s Libraries Report. During the past year, the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom received 464 reports of challenged books. Here’s more from the report:

In California, a school committee voted to remove the Stephen King novella “Different Seasons” from Rocklin High School library shelves. The lone dissenter on that committee was 17-year-old student Amanda Wong, who continued to fight the ban and spoke against the decision at a later school board meeting. After hearing Wong’s concerns that the removal “opens a door to censoring other materials,” the district superintendent overturned the committee’s decision and returned the book to the Rocklin High School library’s collection.

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Adam Johnson has won The Morning News’ annual Tournament of Books with The Orphan Master’s Son.

The contest pits novels in a competitive bracket like basketball teams during the NCAA tournament. The two finalists this year were The Fault in Our Stars by John Green and The Orphan Master’s Son. Johnson had this statement:

I’ll admit I’m a ToB addict, so it’s a special honor to be included in the bracket and to survive some fascinating matchups. And to get bumped, only to Zombie back? My highest achievement. Really, I read it all—the reviews, the color commentary, the reader comments, the NOOK ads—and it always got my day going by thinking about books: why we write them, how we read them, how we speak to them, what they mean to us. I will now demand that my publisher place silver Rooster stickers on all the paperbacks.

Penguin Young Readers Group will publish a memoir entitled This Star Won’t Go Out: The Life & Words of Esther Grace Earl. The book will posthumously publish journal entries, fiction pieces, personal letters and sketches written by a fan of young-adult author John Green.

Green dedicated The Fault in Our Stars  to her and will write an introduction to Earl’s book. Her family and friends will also contribute photos and essays. In a blog post, Green shared her story:

I am so glad that I knew Esther, and that she was a nerdfighter, and that through Esther’s family and This Star Won’t Go Out we can still decrease suck with her. But I am also really pissed off that she died … Esther inspired the story in the sense that I was very angry after her death and wrote constantly, with a focus and passion I hadn’t known since I was rewriting Looking for Alaska in 2003. And Esther helped me to imagine teenagers as more empathetic than I’d given them credit for. And her charm and snark inspired the novel, as did her idea of incorporating an author she liked into her Wish.

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BookExpo America (BEA) and Huffington Post Books have launched the “Have Your (Cup)Cake & Read it Too” video series.

Each month, a different book will be profiled and a cupcake recipe (developed specifically as a tribute to that book) will be shared. Huffington Post Books editor Zoë Triska and BookBliss.com blogger Cassandra Lobo star in these videos.

The organizers recently released their second installment with The Fault In Our Stars by John Green. To accompany the book, Lobo created a lemon cupcake topped with champagne frosting, chocolate hazelnut spread, and rainbow star sprinkles. Follow this link to access the recipe. We’ve embedded the full episode above–what do you think?

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The Descendants actress Shailene Woodley has been cast as Hazel Grace Lancaster in the upcoming film adaptation of John Green‘s The Fault in Our Stars, Entertainment Weekly reports.

As of this writing, the announcement has attracted 240 “likes” on Facebook. Green himself has endorsed Woodley in a blog post: “I am very excited about this. Here’s the thing, tumblr: Shailene Woodley loves The Fault in Our Stars. She really does, and in her audition, she just was Hazel—at least to me.”

The Golden Globe-nominated actress has taken roles in numerous book adaptation projects.

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The 2013 finalists for the Children’s Choice Book Awards have been revealed. Kids can vote from March 19th to May 9th.

The winners will be announced live at the Children’s Choice Book Awards gala on May 13th. Nominees have been divided into four groups classified by different school grades.

In the Author of the Year category, middle-grade fiction writers and young-adult novelists dominate. The nominees include The Fault in Our Stars by John Green, Diary of a Wimpy Kid 7: The Third Wheel by Jeff Kinney, Wonder by R.J. Palacio, The Heroes of Olympus 3: The Mark of Athena by Rick Riordan, and Insurgent by Veronica Roth.

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Fox 2000 has brought on filmmaker Josh Boone to direct The Fault in Our Stars movie adaptation. Last year, Boone wrote and directed an original film called Stuck in Love.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, the screenwriting duo behind (500) Days of Summer, will write the script. Wyck Godfrey and Marty Bowen, the producers of The Twilight Saga film franchise, will produce this project.

As of this writing, John Green‘s popular young-adult novel has spent fifty-seven weeks on the New York Times  bestsellers list.

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Novelist John Green is among the people “who regularly discuss important issues of the day online” picked to ask President Barack Obama questions in a Google+ “Fireside” Hangout tomorrow (February 14) at 4:50 pm EST. Above, we’ve embedded Green’s video about this virtual event.

Along with the other participants, Green will ask the President both his own questions and queries submitted by readers. Google outlined the event in a blog post:

the President will turn to Google+ to continue a more recent tradition, by taking questions online after his speech … Much like the Fireside Hangouts held by Vice President Biden and Domestic Policy Director Cecilia Munoz over the past few weeks, the President’s Fireside Hangout will include a group of people who regularly discuss important issues of the day online.