If you’re still young at heart and consider yourself to be a young adult, then you may be interested and be able to connect to the characters in one of John Green’s older books called “Looking for Alaska.”

 

Miles is from Florida. He lives an uneventful life with and has no friends to show for it. Miles embarks on a new life at the Culver Creek Preparatory High School in Alabama for his junior year, the same school his father attended. In the famous last words of Francois Rabelais, Miles claims that he is leaving home “to seek a Great Perhaps.”

 

Upon arriving at Culver Creek, Miles (the tall and slender) receives his ironic nickname of Pudge from his roommate Chip “The Colonel” Martin and ultimately meets a girl named Alaska. You see, the title of this book has nothing to do with the state of Alaska, but rather this girl named Alaska. And, of course, being the awkward teenager that he is, Pudge develops a stereotypical crush on our title character amidst prep school pranking.

 

The book itself is divided into two sections – “Before” and “After” – but to find out the event that dictates the before and after, you will have you read this one for yourself.

 

But now to the tricky part: how do I feel about this book or what can I say about it?

 

Even though these are 16 and 17-year-old high school students and I am a fifth-year senior in college, I was surprised at how relatable many of the events and the “lessons” learned in this book are.. And this is coming from me, seven years after a time when I may have experienced these things myself.

 

I used to think that I was done with young adult fiction—that my reading level was so above and beyond what these novels encompass. But I was wrong. Not only am I still what I would consider a young adult (23 is young adult, right?), these novels still have so much to share.

 

Ignoring the details of age, we’re all still experiencing the same things – the same struggles, the same revelations, the same successes, the same hopes. Whether we find it in childhood favorites or a piece of classic literature, everything we read has something to teach, sometimes even sneaking up on us and slapping us in the face.

 

For me, “Looking for Alaska” is one of those that snuck up on me. I, too, now seek a Great Perhaps, but for reasons you’ll have to have to read the book to discover.