Reading these lists is like a window back into your childhood. You might have forgotten how much you loved Bridge to Terabithia or Charlotte’s Web. You might remember that first time you read Frances Hodgson Burnett’s A Little Princess and sobbed when Sara Crewe is reunited with her father. You might be transported back to the moment you sat curled up in bed turning page after page on The Wizard of Earthsea.

For Samantha Shannon, bestselling author of dystopian novel The Bone Season, the three books she couldn’t stop thinking about as a child were Cornelia Funke’s Dragon Rider, Noughts and Crosses by Malorie Blackman and Sabriel by Garth Nix.

When I saw her picks I was instantly a kid again, seeing myself in Inkheart’s resourceful Meggie, who learns that her missing mother might be trapped inside a strange, dusty book her father has been restoring, or as Sabriel, the teenage necromancer with surprising powers in Garth Nix’s parallel universe Abhorsen series. I had forgotten all about those books but just seeing their titles sent me hurtling back to the first time I pulled Abhorsen off the shelves at my local library.

Twitter thread explores how our favourite childhood books impact our personalities