Robin Wasserman: "Stephen King saved my life."
At the Atlantic:
Ender’s Game (along with everything Ayn Rand ever wrote) assures: You are special.
Flower in the Attic commiserates: You are trapped.
While King offers salvation: You are powerful.
We all know literature empowers youth—Stephen King, as is his way, turns the metaphor literal.
The comments section gets a little hairy (YA is stupid, etc., etc.), but the essay itself made me want to dig out a copy of IT.