I sometimes wonder how much influence books and television have had on who I have become - whether the afterschool special had an impact on my moral and ethical upbringing or if The Outsiders helped me to be more understanding of the role of the 'other'. Did the Lord of the Rings make me a better friend? Did To Kill a Mockingbird make me a better father? I remember a line from a crime show like CSI or Law & Order when a grieving father of that week's teen victim says something like "All I had left to do was to teach her to think for herself" and how often I thought of that line when Maggie hit her teen years (morbid as that sounds). I think now about how she thinks for herself and how little she thinks like me, but that she sure did read a lot and maybe that had an impact.

And then I think of John Green writing for young adults; teenagers trying to find a path. I want young people to read this because he writes about this 'becoming' and ways it can be done. Paper Towns has an excellent catalyst for characters to begin to mold how they'll interact with the world and its people - how they will become more themselves, mirroring less what their peers do as they chart their course. It's got a nice mystery and some rich characters that grow. It's got less precocious banter than the other John Green I've read; rings truer to my ear.