If you want to spread a lie quickly, mix in a bit of truth.

Fiction has a lot to teach us about ourselves and the world around us. Reading it provides us insight into a world behind the author’s hand, guiding us into their imagination and discovering something new.

In-between the scenes, dialogue and extraordinary measures characters go through to accomplish their goal, there are glimmers of a mirror to force us to reflect. The reason fiction resonates with us is because it opens up something inside of ourselves.

We know what we’re reading is a lie, but the truth of what we’re reading is what part of us opens… or closes. We get drawn into work because of our own latent desires.

Goosebump books, by R.L. Stine, hook young readers because the world of Goosebumps is perfect. There’s no divorced parents, gruesome torture or even death. Young people feel safe entering that world and feel comfortable getting sucked into the scary, or horror, part of it. A Goosebumps book is a hug from your parents after having a nightmare.

Fantasy books hook young adults, specifically the outliers, most. It’s an appeal to escape to another world where your sense of wonder, weirdness and call to be more powerful than the nerd you are beckons the reader. Eventually, many of those readers find their place in the world and those fantasy books don’t hold the same sway they once did.

My students are hooked on the Gone series this year. Mystery, adventure, wonder, action, suspense, thriller… it was all there for them. I had a hard time getting through the first hundred pages because I couldn’t stop thinking about the babies and young children (I eventually put that part of my brain to rest and blasted through the rest).

We don’t remember books for what lies the author told, but for what truths were illuminated in our reading of it.

Fiction is necessary because its lie is what brings you to the truth.