The books you love as a child can reveal a lot about your personality, children’s author Adam Gidwitz writes for Aeon. Harry Potter or any of the Cinderella adaptations both speak to a reader who longs for a parent’s recognition and love, or who feels undervalued by peers and figures of authority. Gidwitz taught a highschool classroom that read 1984 early in his career, which he says is successful as a teen novel because it captures a protagonist’s life that is “observed and constrained”, precisely the sentiments many angsty teenagers feel. He says bestsellers can unravel the “inner psychic landscapes of large swaths of the American public”, and that choosing to read certain books over others is “imagination therapy [which elicits] secrets that their readers did not know they kept.”